The  Story  of  a  Lover 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


thS 


Boni    and    Liver  ight 

New    York  1919 


COPYKIGHT,  1919, 
BY  BONI  &  LlVERJGHT, 


All  rights  reserved, 
including  th»  Scandinavian 


Firti  Edition,  Augvtt,  1919 
Second  Edition  September,  1919 


Printed  in  the  U.S.A. 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


2136065   ' 


THE  STORY  OF  A  LOVER 


Chapter  One 

WAS  thirty  years  old  when  I  saw 
her  for  the  first  time.  We  did  not 
speak,  we  were  not  introduced,  but 
I  knew  that  I  must  meet  her;  I  knew  that  love 
which  had  hitherto  been  gnawing  in  my  imag- 
ination and  my  senses,  had  found  an  object.  I 
fell  in  love  at  first  sight.  She  did  not  see  me 
— and  I  sometimes  think  she  has  never  seen  me 
since,  although  we  are  married  and  have  lived 
together  for  fifteen  years. 

Life  had  prepared  me  to  love.  I  was  born 
sensitive  and  passionate,  and  had  acquired  more 
emotion  than  I  was  endowed  with.  I  had  ac- 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


quired  it  partly  through  ill-health  and  ignorance 
as  a  lad,  and  partly  through  an  intense  sex- 
imagination  to  which  I  habitually  and  gladly 
yielded.  My  boyhood  was  filled  with  brood- 
ing, warm  dreams,  and  partial  experiences,  al- 
ways unsatisfied,  and  leaving  a  nature  more  and 
more  stirred,  more  and  more  demanding  the 
great  adventure. 

Then,  in  youth  and  early  manhood, — as  a 
student,  a  traveler, — experiences  came  rich 
enough  in  number.  The  mysterious  beauty 
and  terrible  attraction  that  woman  has  for  the 
adolescent  was  not  even  relatively  satisfied  by 
my  many  adventures.  Each  left  me  more  un- 
satisfied than  before.  My  hunger  for  profound 
relationship  grew  so  strong  that  all  my  ideas  of 
beauty,  in  art,  in  life  and  in  nature,  seemed  to 
be  a  mere  comment,  a  partial  explanation,  of 
that  which  was  a  flame  in  my  soul. 

This  explanation,  this  comment  derived  from 
art,  while  the  ultimate  result  was  greater  in- 

[8] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


flammation,  so  to  speak,  yet  often  temporarily 
soothed.  This  was  especially  true  of  philoso- 
phy and  reflective  poetry. ;  I  had  no  interest 
in  metaphysics  as  such,  but  when,  in  the  uni- 
versity, the  magnificent  generalizations  of 
philosophy  first  came  to  me,  I  thought  for  a 
time  that  I  had  found  rest. 

Dear  Wordsworth!  How  he  cooled  my 
fevered  senses  and  soothed  my  heart  and  mind ; 
how  he  pleasingly  introduced  into  every  strong 
sensation  an  hygienic  element  of  thought  which 
made  the  whole  into  warm  reflection  rather  than 
disturbing  impulse!  And  dear  Philosophy! 
Who,  when  taught  to  see  things  from  the  view- 
point of  eternity,  could  be  intensely  unhappy 
about  his  own  small  Self  and  its  imperfections? 
In  Plato,  in  Spinoza,  in  Hegel,  Fichte, 
Nietzsche,  Schopenhauer,  I  felt  (the  individual 
temperament  struggling  to  free  itself,  as  I  had 
been  struggling  to  free  myself,  from  too  great 
an  interest  in  Self  through  the  contemplation  of 


Jb..it 


5 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


what  seemed  to  be  the  eternal  and  unvarying 
truth. 

But  then,  with  returning  strength,  there  came 
metaphysical  skepticism.  These  great  struc- 
tures of  philosophy  seemed  to  me  to  be  houses 
of  cards,  toys  for  imaginative  children.  And 
at  the  same  time  there  burst  upon  me,  with  re- 
newed intensity,  the  world  of  sensuous  art,  the 
direct,  disturbing  force  of  Nature,  the  mysteri- 
ous appeal  of  Woman.  Philosophy  had  pre- 
pared me  for  a  greater  absorption  in  life  than 
would  otherwise  have  been  possible.  It  helped 
to  make  me  incapable  of  what  men  call  prac- 
tical life,  and  made  me  attach  values  only  to 
significant  things. 

And  it  lent  to  my  most  trivial  relations  with 
women  the  spiritual  quality  of  meaning.  Even 
in  the  midst  of  transient  sensuality,  the  eternal 
flow  of  Nature,  and  the  inherent  significance  of 
all  sex  life,  no  matter  how  impersonal  and  un- 
individualized,  gave  a  constant  and  inevitable 

[10] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


spirituality.  It  was  a  torturing,  promising 
spirituality.  It  beckoned  to  something  beyond, 
dropped  strangely  disturbing  hints  of  what 
might  be.  In  the  midst  of  kaleidoscopic 
women,  the  Unknown  Woman  was  suggested, 
foreshadowed.  These  sensual-poetic  experi- 
ences were  purifiers  of  the  amorous  tempera- 
ment, rendering  it  at  once  more  passionate, 
more  spiritual  and  more  classic,  less  mixed  with 
prejudice,  with  the  indecency  of  ignorance,  with 
unclear  as  well  as  unclean  theological  taboos. 
I  went  through  every  phase  of  so-called  coarse 
sexual  experience,  and  thereby  strengthened 
and  purified  my  spiritual  demand  for  the  Great 
Adventure.  If  I  had  not  known  women,  I 
should  never  have  known  woman;  nor  could  I 
have  loved  Her  so  essentially,  so  absolutely  as 
I  have. 

With  this  past  behind  me — a  past  full  of 
the  pleasures  of  thought  and  sense,  of  the  pain 
of  self-doubt,  of  strenuous  struggle  for  self- 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


realization,  for  self-understanding — I  met  Her. 
In  spite  of  my  thirty  years,  I  was  as  youthful 
as  a  faun  endowed  with  a  mind  and  who  had 
recently  partly  escaped  from  a  theological  con- 
ception of  life.  From  the  Present  of  Pagan- 
ism I  looked  back  to  the  sensual  struggles  of 
escape  from  the  secondary  results  of  a  defeated 
theology. 

And  she !  How  different  her  nature  and  her 
past  from  mine !  She  had  never  struggled  with 
herself.  She  did  not  need  to,  for  herself  did 
not  disturb  her.  Imperturbable,  she  struggled 
only  with  her  work,  with  what  she  was  trying 
to  form.  She  was  an  artist,  and  singularly  un- 
conscious of  herself.  Keen  to  external  beauty, 
she  was  not  interested  in  the  subjective  nature 
of  her  Soul,  or  its  needs,  or  how  it  worked.  In 
fact,  her  soul  seemed  to  have  no  needs.  I  often 
told  her  she  had  no  soul,  but  I  was  wrong,  as 
we  shall  see. 

Along  one  of  the  corridors  of  the  world  she 

[12] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


passed  me  for  a  moment,  and  I  knew  that  I 
must  love  her.  She  was  a  thing  of  beauty! 
It  was  not  merely  her  lovely  skin  and  hair :  she 
was  one  of  those  rich,  dark  blondes  who  seem 
to  have  absorbed  the  light  and  warmth  of  the 
sun  and  to  have  given  it  a  definite  form  which 
introduced  the  spiritual  quality  of  the  brunette 
— blond  in  color,  brunette  in  quality.  There 
was  nothing  bleached  about  her,  nothing  faintt 
nothing  iridescent.  Her  color  and  quality 
were  that  of  saturation.  It  was  as  if  in  her 
skin  and  hair  warmth  and  color  lay  suspended, 
as  it  lies  suspended  in  dropping  summer  rain. 

But  I  know  it  was  not  her  skin  and  hair  that 
I  loved.  What  I  loved  I  feel  now,  though  I 
did  not  analyze  it  then,  was  the  integrity  of 
her  physical  and  nervous  nature.^  She  was  no 
self-conscious  neurasthenic,  as  I  was!  She  was 
cool,  unconscious,  poised — cold,  the  ignorant 
would  call  her.  And  the  Silence  which  breathed 
from  her  when  I  first  saw  :r  has  been  hers 

[13] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


ever  since.  Never,  even  in  agony,  has  she 
been  noisy.  Her  deep  quiet  comes  as  a  dis- 
turbing thing,  to  most  people,  and  it  has  been 
often  the  cause  of  quarreling  between  us — for 
I,  nervous,  with  a  volcanic  past,  frequently  chal- 
lenged this  quiet  soul,  challenged  it  morally  and 

Jf\   socially,  succeeded,  to  my  immense  satisfaction, 
i 

in  disturbing  it  once  or  twice,  but  being  more 
often  disturbed  and  irritated  myself! 

I  maneuvered  a  meeting,  and  many,  many 
followed,  and  have  been  following  for  fifteen 
years.  Our  first  few  meetings  showed  me  that 
she  had  no  past!  All  that  she  could  or  can 
remember  is  that  she  had  worked — worked 
calmly  and  quietly,  without  excitement.  Her 
life  as  a  child  was  as  calm  as  that  of  a  plant. 
I  have  a  whole  world  of  violent  emotions  re- 
membered, stretching  along  from  my  third  or 
fourth  year.  She  has  no  remembered  child- 
hood. She  grew  too  beautifully,  too  gradu- 
ally, too  quietly,  to  have  occur  those  cataclys- 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


mic  things  which  one  remembers.  And  she  still 
grows ! 

I  suppose  what  drew  us  together  was  Won- 
der. I  marveled  at  her  strange  and7  beautiful 
integrity,  the  wholeness  and  calmness  of  her 
being.  My  vivid  nature,  my  tremulous  needs, 
my  spiritual  restlessness,  interested  her.  I 
loved  her,  and  for  me  she  felt  a  deep  amuse- 
ment. The  strangeness  I  felt  in  her  seemed 
beautiful ;  the  strangeness  she  felt  in  me  seemed 
interesting  and  amusing.  And  for  years  the 
only  word  of  approval  I  ever  heard  from  her 
was  the  word  "amusing."  I  can  imagine  Mona 
Lisa  saying  the  same  word,  in  exactly  the  same 
spirit,  meaning  intellectually  entertaining. 

"A  thousand  years  old  am  I,"  she  would  say. 
And  I  seemed  so  young  to  her;  amusingly 
young.  I  suppose  all  lovers  are  young,  no  mat- 
ter how  many  years  they  have.  And  yet  it  was 
I  who  had  definite  experience,  as  the  world 
commonly  understands  that  word.  And  she 

[15] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


had  had  none.  And  yet  she  was  old  and  I  was 
young.  She  was  not  nai've,  she  was  not  fresh. 
She  was  like  the  Sphinx,  wonderful,  old,  with 
a  beauty  that  to  me  at  times  was  terrible.  And 
'  I  charmed  her  because  I  was  so  pleasingly  so- 
cial, so  civilized,  and  hadxso  many  ideas  derived 
from  life,)  ideas  which  pleased  her  mind  and 
stirred  her  sense  of  poetry  and  humor.  I  loved 
her  for  the  essence  of  her  being,  and  she  liked 
me  warmly  for  what  I  was  able  to  say  and  feel. 
Especially  for  what  I  was  able  to  say !  How 
she  would  listen !  I  know  that  if  what  I  have 
said  to  her  could  be  recorded,  it  would  pass  as 
literature.  I  am  proud  only  of  that  one  thing : 
that  to  her  I  talked  well — really  well — for 
years.  I  told  her  all — all  of  my  life,  and  I 
think  it  must  have  seemed  to  her  like  the  life 
of  some  inhabitant  of  Mars.  Surely,  there  was 
in  our  relationship  a  deep  unfamiliarity — I  was 
strange  to  her  and  she  was  infinitely  strange  to 
me.  But  I  loved  her  strangeness,  and  my 

[16] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


strangeness   only  interested   her.     Being  pro  jf 
foundly  kind,  that  interest  finally  awoke  emo-  f  W 
tion  in  her — but  it  was  not  the  love  of  the  real 
and  mysterious  spiritual  form  which  is  at  the 
basis  of  every  human  being.     She  felt  sesthet- 
ically  my  qualities.     She  did  not  love  Me. 

It  was  this  which  made  me  bitter,  at  times, 
during  many  years,  and  even  now  comes  to  me 
like  some  essential  pain.     Quite  unjustly  so — 
and  yet  inevitable.     When  I  saw  awaken  in" 
her,  in  later  years,  some  such  feeling  for  other 
men  as  I  had  for  her,  a  feeling  not  based  on 
what  they  could  say  or  do  or  even  feel,  but^vs> 
on  what  her  imagination  told  her  they  deeply 
were,  an  indescribable  rage  would  take  posses- 
sion of  my  soul. 

Perhaps  that  rage  was  merely  jealousy, 
that  loathsome  feeling  based  on  an  incred- 
ible sense  of  possession,  but  I  do  not  believe 
that.  After  my  genuine  social  thought  began 
she  might  have  had  all  manner  of  relations 

[17] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


with  other  men,  without  deep  disturbance 
on  my  part;  I  might  have  been  unmoved,  had 
she  seen  me,  once  and  forever !  But  as  I  have 
said,  she  felt  only  my  qualities,  my  gifts  of  the 
mind,  heart,  and  spirit.  She  did  not  have  an 
immediate,  temperamental  understanding  and 
.ove  for  myself !  And  to  have  this  feeling  for 
some  soul  is  a  need  of  all  deep  natures.  When 
I  saw  this  need  in  her — unsatisfied  by  me — 
reaching  out  to  others  to  whom  she  had  no  co- 
herent relation — only  the  mysterious,  tempera- 
mental, almost  metaphysical  one  that  we  mean 
when  we  say  "in  |ove" — it  was  then  that  the 
rage  came  upon  me !  Was  it  jealousy?  It  was 
strong  and  terrible,  whatever  it  was,  capable  of 
overpowering  all  the  acquired  canons  of  civi- 
lization and  making  of  me  an  incarnate,  miser- 
'able,  bestial  Demand! 

I  imagine  that  at  least  a  part  of  this  pain  is 
derived,  at  any  rate  in  my  case,  from  an  ego- 
tistic sense  of  something  deeply  essential  that  is 

[18] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


lacking  in  oneself.     If  this  deep  woman,  who 
admired  and  warmly  liked  me  in  every  name- 
able  way,  could  not  feel  the  temperamental  stir, 
Should  not  feel  me  as  distinguished  from  the  sum 
my  qualities,  what  was  the  matter  with  me?' 
.__- V  -1  . „— — <— -  —-          v 

What  did  I  deeply  lack"?  I  had  no  crude  lack. 
Physically  and  mentally  I  was  competent.  I 
could  meet  her  desires  in  every  obvious  way. 
Yes !  But  the  Real  Self  is  not  obvious.  That, 
to  her,  was  lacking;  that  most  mysterious,  and 
yet  to  the  eye  of  the  amorous  imagination,  most 
real  thing  of  all,  which  needs  no  expression  to  I 
manifest  itself,  that  she  never  saw !  Perhaps 
that  is  lacking  in  me !  This  fear  may  partly  ac- 
count for  the  pain  I  felt.  What  strenuous  soul 
can  endure  the  thought  that  perhaps  he  is  lack- 
ing in  a  way  so  deep  that  it  is  unanalyzable? 

Sometimes  I  would  think  that  it  was  my 
partly-shattered  nervous  system.  How  could 
this  woman's  nature,  with  its  sweet  integrity, 
love  anything  but  that  which  had  developed  in 

[19] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


the  most  beautiful  way?  I  loved  her  partly 
because  she  had  grown  without  harm.  I  had 
not  grown  without  injury;  and  one  perhaps 
cannot  love  sesthetically,  temperamentally,  the 
injured.  My  very  injuries  accounted  for  my 
eloquence,  my  intensity  of  feeling.  This  nat- 
urally would  interest,  but  how  could  an  ses- 
thetic  soul  love  the  shattered  cause  of  even  fine 
things'?  I  have  never  known  a  keenly  expres- 

i  sive  person  who  was  nervously  sound;  and  the 

'  - — ——  •*•  -_  -->— 

nervously  unsound  are  not  aesthetically  beau- 
tiful, however  productive  they  may  sometimes 
be  of  beautiful  things.  It  shows  a  fine  instinct 
in  a  woman  to  love  only  what  in  itself  is  lovely, 
without  materialistic  or  sentimental  regard  for 
what  that  thing  may  do,  say,  or  feel. 


[20J 


Chapter  II 

ELL,  as  I  have  written,  I  met  her  in 
one  of  the  corridors  of  the  world, 
and  I  loved  her,  and  I  insisted  on  her 
knowing  me,  or  trying  to  know  me.  She  was 
working,  and  I  was  working,  and  in  the  eve- 
nings we  met  in  the  cafes  and  restaurants  and 

_j^*  ^^ 

/we  talked,  or  rather  I  talked.     I  talked  about 
everything — literature,  art,  sex,  wine,  people,  I 
life, — especially  about  life !     He  who  does  not 
know  very  definitely  what  the  indefinite  word 
"life"  means  has  no  knowledge  of  what  the  es- 

IL. 

sential  social  relationship  between  a  man  and  a 
woman  is.     A  fine  woman  cares  for  nothing 
else.     She  is  not  a  specialist.     And  yet  most 
misguided  busy  men  avoid  talking  life  to  their  / 
sweethearts  and  wives.     They  leave  the  real 

[21] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


\  themes  to  the  unworthy — to  rakes,  artists,  and 
philosophers,  to  bohemians  and  outcasts,  or  to 
the  very  few  respectable  and  at  the  same  time 
intellectual  men  who  are  living  on  their  in- 
comes. And  then  they  are  surprised  when  their 
wives  or  sweethearts  begin  to  see  with  emo- 
tions somebody  else!  Men  are  for  the  most 
part  extremely  na'ive — especially  good,  sober, 
industrious,  business  American  men.  They  are 
becoming  the  Predestined  ones  of  the  earth,  and 
that  is  no  proof  of  the  infidelity  of  their  wives 
and  mistresses,  for  they  who  sow  must  reap,  and 
!/ Nature  will  outlive  the  ethical  remnants  of  an 
;>  outworn  theology.  There  are  one  hundred 
thousand  well-to-do  wives  in  the  United  States 
to-day  who  are  deeply  disturbed  by  life,  and 
their  husbands  do  not  know  that  anything  but 
\  nerves  is  happening  to  them. 

She  liked  my  talk  from  the  start.     But  to  her 
it  was  not  disturbing — not  then — as  it  would 
have  been  to  a  less  composed  soul.     To  her  it 
[22] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


[ 

was  merely  contributive.  It  was  one  more  cool 
channel  to  knowledge.  From  the  start  I  tried, 
tried  hard,  to  disturb  her.  I  felt  that  if  I  could 
disturb  her  she  would  love  me.  In  a  sense  I 
was  more  naive  than  the  business  man!  I 
might  have  known  that  love  for  my  words 
would  not  lead  to  love  of  me,  that  through  my 
5  talk  she  might  love  life  more,  not  me ;  her  love 
;  of.  life,  heightened,  enhanced  through  me, 
might  lead  her  to  see  others,  not  necessarily  me ! 
I  might  easily  act  as  an  impassioned  medium 
to  the  Road  of  Life  along  which  she  might  find 
beautiful  forms  fit  for  love.  I  helped  her,  as 
a  matter  of  fact,  to  see  men,  to  feel  their  qual- 
ity, just  as  she  helped  me  to  see  women.  It  is 
true  that  had  I  not  known  women,  I  would  not 
have  known  her;  but  it  is  also  true  that  knowl- 
edge of  her  gave  me  a  deeper  understanding  and 
the  possibility  of  a  more  intimate  approach  to 
other  women. 

At  that  early  time,  however,  I  did  not  real- 

[23] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


ize  that  at  all.  I  did  not  know  that  I  was 
working  for  others  as  well  as  for  myself.  In 
a  deep  sense  there  is  a  sort  of  impersonality,  a 
lack  of  egotism,  in  passion.  It  drives  us  on, 
even  against  our  personal  interests,  or  what  we 

* 

I    narrowly  regard  as  our  personal  interests.     A 

jvj^v- 

mind  and  heart  in  love  with  life  is  never  merely 
personal.     One  of  the  intensest  passions  is  to 
*>>*    give  oneself  to  something  which  overpowers 
one's  personality. 

Working !  Yes,  that  is  the  word !  I  worked 
for  her  as  I  never  worked  for  money,  for  art, 
for  fame,  for  duty.  No  one  can  know  how  I 
have  worked  who  does  not  know  how  I  have 
loved.  Nothing  exhausts  like  emotion;  espe- 
cially the  higher  forms  of  sex-emotion,  mixed 
with  temperament  and  thought  and  a  sense  of 
Rvalue  as  all-embracing  as  religion.  I  imagine 
that  the  few  great  artists  and  doers  are  they 
who  are  capable  of  this  great  sex  intensity  but 
who  through  some  kind  of  happy  perversion 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


put  this  intensity  into  their  art  or  deeds  and 
so  strike  out  great  forms.  Only  in  white  heat 
is  a  great  thing  created  — a  human  being,  or  an 
art  form  or  a  sublime  social  thought,  or  an  act 
of  transcendent  meaning  for  the  race.  Had  I 
been  carried  by  as  inevitable  a  passion  to  make 
an  epic  in  art,  or  to  live  an  epic  in  social  strug- 
gle as  I  have  been  to  commune  with  a  human 
temperament,  I  might  well  have  been  looked 
upon  by  my  fellow  men  as  one  of  the  great  ones 
of  the  earth.  But  few  of  us  who  have  the  nec- 
essary intensity  are  willing,  even  if  we  are  able, 
to  make  this  sacrifice — for  it  is  a  sacrifice.  We 
are  impelled  irresistibly  to  exhaust  ourselves 
on  the  proper  object,  as  is  the  moth  devoted  to 
the  devouring  flame.  To  withhold  ourselves 
from  the  proper  object  of  passion  is  the  per- 
versity of  heroic  self-denial. 

I  y  She  married  me  at  last  without  being  more  y  /  v 
than  deeply  pleased.     My  warmth  and  my  im-  / 
passioned  ideas  became  a  necessity  to  her.    Life 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


without  me  would  in  some  measure  have  lacked 
richness.  It  was  after  a  year  of  strenuous  woo- 
ing on  my  part — a  struggle  which  involved  all 
my  mental,  moral  and  emotional  resources. 
Before  she  knew  me  she  needed  nothing.  I  had 
taught  her  to  need.  This  she  realized  when, 
in  a  moment  of  exhausted  despair,  I  left  her 
and  tried  desperately  to  live  without  her. 
After  a  time  she  wrote  and  I  interpreted  her 

letter  as  a  recall.     I  returned  on  the  wing  of 

. 
desire,  and  there  was  a  subtle  difference  in  her 

when  we  met.  She  was  silent,  but  her  large, 
mysterious-colored  eyes  glowed  with  a  half- 
questioning  promise.  She  seemed  to  be  won- 
dering whether  she  was  destined,  after  all,  to 
live  with  me. 

We  were  never  engaged  to  be  married.    She 
never   passionately    committed    herself.      V£e. 
grew  into  marriage.     There  came  a  time  when 
she  liked  to  have  me  hold  her  in  my  arms,  to 
kiss  her  long  hours.     It  was  her  education,  sen- 

-2*^U     <^l^        4  (/A  v*V       '' 

c/^         d^L,  - 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 

timental,  sensuous.  It  enhanced  her  nature, 
and  it  made  her  nature  demand.  But  it  was 
tantalizingly  impersonal.  She  liked  equally 
well  to  sit  by  the  seashore  and  watch  the  waves 
and  the  line  of  the  sky.  I  have  been  driven 
from  her  arms,  where  I  felt  like  a  happy 
stranger,  by  a  sudden  anguish  which  in  extreme 
reaction  would  carry  me  to  the  arms  of  some 
less-balanced  stranger,  whose  nervous  intensity 
would  reestablish  me  momentarily  into  relative 
feelinglessness. 

I  remember,  on  one  occasion,  when  I  was  in 
this  mood,  how  I  allowed  a  girl  to  woo  me. 
She  was  led  to  do  so  by  my  despair  which,  keep- 
ing me  spiritually  away  from  her,  provoked  her 
ambition.  She  passionately  desired  to  over- 
come what  had  overcome  me.  I  understood  her 
and  was  unhappy  and  brutal  enough  to  allow 
her  to  try  the  impossible.  She — the  only  She 
— not  this  poor  momentary  girl — was  never 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


consciously  brutal  to  me,  as  I  was  to  the  other. 
And  yet  I  constantly  reproached  her. 

I  said  she  had  no  soul.  I  said  it  repeatedly 
in  all  manner  of  ways.  I  said  it  when  she  was 
warmly  hidden  in  my  arms.  I  said  it  as  we 
drank  wine  together  across  the  table  of  the 
genial  table-d'hote.  I  said  it  between  the  acts 
of  the  theater.  I  said  it  in  the  street-cars  and 
in  the  open  country  stretches  where  we  walked. 
Did  she  marry  me  partly  because  of  a  kindly 
desire  to  prove  to  me  that  I  was  wrong?  I  did 
all  I  could  to  disturb,  to  wound,  to  arouse,  to 
make  her  calm  soul  discontented  and  unhappy; 
as  well  as  to  interest  her  vividly  and  constantly. 
I  think  the  truth  is  that  she  married  me  because 
she  had  to.  Like  Nature  I  was  always  there 
and  would  not  be  denied.  Water  runs  down  hill 
without  any  great  desire  to  get  to  the  bottom. 

These  things  I  said  to  her,  of  course,  as  I  said 
all  things  to  her.  She  would  smile  one  of  those 
quiet  smiles  that  go  all  through  her  being,  that 

[28] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


are  as  spiritual  as  they  are  physical^  that  are 
neither  and  both.  Sometimes  in  her  hinting 
way,  she  would  quietly  suggest  that  if  she 
should  try  to  express  herself  to  me  I  would  run 
away.  She  would  amusedly  call  attention  to 
the  vanity  and  egotism  in  me  that  demanded 

above  everything  else  a  sympathetic  listener. 

— ^— — ~~-~~~~  • 

It  is  beautifully  true  that  she  holds  all  subjects  ) 
'in  solution,  that  she  broods  over  a  theme  and 
does  not  try  violently  to  assert  her  personality. 
With  her  always  is  going  on  a  process  of 
incubation.     With     complete    pregnancy     of 
thought-feeling  and  feeling-thought,  she  waits, 
waits,  knowing  that  things  grow  only  in  quiet. "<|/x» 
j  The  gods  approve  the  depth  and  not  the  tumult 
I  of  the  soul,   wrote  Wordsworth,   the   deeply 
medicinal  poet,  (it  is  probable  that  the  finest 
women  are  like  this.     Holding  all  things  to- 
gether, brooding  over  life,  the  tumult  of  the 
soul  is  hateful  to  their  natures,^j-the  tumult  i 
which  sometimes  has  even  a  lovely  place  in  the  ( " 

[39] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


make-up  of  a  man  who  must  have  violent  rela- 
tions with  an  imperfect  world.)  And  I  do  not 
think  that  it  is  only  my  vanity  and  egotism 
which  makes  me  feel  so — my  intense  and  mor- 
bid desire  for  temperamental  sympathy.  That 
exists,  it  is  true,  but  in  this  brooding  nature 
there  is  something  impersonally  beautiful,  un- 
explained by  my  egotistic  needs.  The  seed  as 
it  bursts  quietly  in  spring-warmed  earth  is  beau- 
tiful, not  because  it  does  not  interrupt  us  in  our 
feverish  futilities,  bu^because  in  itself  it  is  ade- 
quately and  richly  significant  of  the  whole  urge 
of  life/, 

It  is  evident  that  I  need  to  defend  myself 
against  her  charge,  that  if  she  had  been  expres- 
sive, I  would  have  become  cold.  The  philoso- 
phy which  I  have  displayed  may  not  be  suf- 
ficient. What  is  significant,  however,  and  I 
think  conclusive,  is  the  fact  that  on  the  rare  oc- 
casions when  she  became  expressive  to  me  and  to 
others,  I  did  not  tend  to  withdraw  from  her;  on 

[30} 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


the  contrary,  I  felt  nearer  to  her,  nearer  in  a  new 
way,  nearer  through  perceiving  in  her  a  slight 
touch  of  the  weakness  I  knew  so  well  in  myself. 
Marriage  had  in  me  the  typical  and  rightly 
typical  result.  It  cured  me,  for  the  time  be- 
ing, not  of  love,  far  from  it,  but  of  the  diseases 
of  love.  For  a  long  time  I  had  neglected  the 
world  for  her.  I  could  not  work,  except  per- 
functorily. My  best  friends,  whom  I  used  to 
spend  long  hours  with,  I  found  pale  and  unin- 
teresting. Books  were  tedious,  had  nothing  to 
do  with  the  truth  of  life.  Relatives  were  well- 
meaning,  but  boresome.  Often  I  reflected  how 
normal  and  right  the  hero  of  d'Anmmzio's  "II 
Trionfo  della  Morte"  was,  when,  separated 
even  for  a  week  from  his  mistress,  most  poignant 
boredom  would  descend  like  an  active  pall  upon 
his  soul!  Formerly  I  had  thought  him  dis- 
eased, neurasthenic.  (But  now  he  seemed  glori- 
ously normal;  he  had  the  Tightness  of  the  Su- 
perman about  him.  ;  It  was  only  the  other  day 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


I  received  a  letter  from  a  lover  whose  senti- 
ment came  to  me  as  something  deeply  familiar. 
"This  experience,"  he  wrote,  "has  made  me  even 
more  impatient  than  ever  of  stupids,  bores  and 
sillys.  It  has  burned  the  inessential  out  of  me 
with  regard  to  human  commerce." 

"Burned  the  inessential  out  of  me!"  Yes, 
it  does  that.  And  it  makes  us  pathetically  de- 
pendent on  the  essential.  If  we  have  not  that, 
we  have  nothing,  when  we  are  in  love  and  with- 
out the  possession  of  the  desired  one. 

But   with  possession,   blessed   state!    comes  f 
again  into  our  ken  the  world  with  its  varied  - 
interests,  and  all  more  wonderful  than  before  !f 
When  I  felt  secure  in  the  possession  of  my  be- 
loved everything  else  acquired  fresh  beauty  in 
my  eyes,  and  I  could  be  without  her  and  yet 
happy  and  deeply  interested  in  what  I  was  do- 
ing and  experiencing.     My  friends  became  my 
friends  again,  my  work  my  work,  and  it  all  had 
a  glow  of  added  meaning.     I  was  wiser,  and 

[32] 

"V.*~"j*v"     //  n 

%    /SCC      tv&*£A 

.i".  f-. «  Jr* 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


happily  wiser  than  before,  and  understood  more 
of  the  nature  of  the  beautiful.  The  delicious 
creature  had  made  the  universe  more  delicious 
to  me  than  ever. 

//  And  the  honeymoon  !  This  wonderful  time 
that  makes  happy  and  normal  at  once  —  that 
gives  color  and  joy  and  sensuous  pleasure  and 
at  the  same  time  frees  one  from  the/too  great 
intensity  of  an  unsatisfied  desire  IV  The  won- 
derful, ornate  honeymoon  when  the  full  beauty 
of  your  mistress  is  revealed  to  you,  but  when 
this  beauty  has  the  cooling  and  pleasing  and 
caressing  quality  of  Nature  and  no  longer  cor- 
rodes and  harasses  and  waylays  and  deeply 
troubles  !  The  sleepless,  wonderful  nights,  the 
wonderful  languid  days  following,  the  infinite 
noon  embraces,  the  infinite  talks  and  hopes  and 
plans;  and  the  sensuous  April  quarrels,  the  life- 
giving  rain  of  them,  the  hot  and  liquid  recon- 
ciliations! The  melting  joy  of  it!  The  glori- 
ous health  of  it;  the  senses  gloriously  stirred  and/" 
^gloriously  satisfied  ! 

*-       i    ^; 

f  &  *  ^" 

-  £8^£<ekf.  Wxz^-*/-*'*"'*    &**e«*~-if- 


*     it 


Chapter  HI 

OOKING  back  on  that  honeymoon 
now,  after  a  lapse  of  fifteen  years, 
it  seems  so  simple,  so  naive  and  so 
lyrical !  It  was  before  the  beginning  of  what 
seemed  to  me  later  the  complexities  of  life,  the 
intricacies  of  human  relations,  those  many-hued 
and  contradictory  threads  which  render  danger- 
ous the  love  relation  and  threaten  its  duration, 
but  at  the  same  time  prevent  its  atrophy.  And 
in  spite  of  the  danger  there  is  something  that 
urges  on  every  strenuous  lover  to  dig  deeper 
down  into  the  wonderful  being  he  is  living  with. 
It  is  a  sound  instinct  which  tells  us  that  unless 
there  is  development  there  is  death.  We  see  in 
all  Nature  the  law  that  to  keep  the  life  we  must 

[34] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


build  up  the  body,  whether  it  be  the  individual 
body  or  the  body  of  a  relationship. 

And  yet  we,  poet-lovers,  struggle  against  the 
passing  of  the  simple  into  the  complex!  The 
lover  passionately  wills  the  continuing  of  the 
same,  but  deeper  than  his  will  is  his  unconscious 

instinct  which  is/preparing  the  unknown  addi- 

\ 

tion,  the  fascinating  new  danger.1  I  remember, 
as  if  it  were  yesterday,  her  despair  when  she 
first  knew  she  was  to  have  a  child.  It  was  not 
so  much  because  she  felt  the  impending  change 
in  our  relation — for,  as  I  have  written,  I  was 
not  then  and  am  not  now  sure  that  she  ever 
fully  accepted  that  relation — as  it  was  the  in- 
trusion into  her  nature  and  life  of  something 
\  unknown  and  seemingly  foreign.  She  rebelled 
consciously  against  the  breaking  up  of  her  in- 

V/^     \        ./'""""^"-"s^  — i IT"*"    "    ii-"^Ti_i      «** 

tegrity,  of  that  breathing  wholeness  of  her  be- 
/  ing  which  made  life,  work  and  love  seem  mere  ^ 
^aspects  of  the  same  simple  thing. 

This  child  was  thrust  upon  her  as  my  love 

135] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


had  been  thrust  upon  her.  It  was  something 
she  did  not  consciously  welcome.  And  yet 
deeper  than  her  consciousness — and  of  this  she 
was  well  aware  at  a  later  time — was  the  need 
of  that  disturbing  change.  I  know  she  wanted 
the  child  with  a  want  deeper  than  her  will,  and 
this  conviction  has  often  made  me  feel  that  she 
wanted  my  love  more  than  she  knew.  My  love 
and  the  children  that  resulted  were  the  tools 
that  Nature  used  whereby  she  might  continue 
to  live,  through  change  and  development. 

What  obscure  joy  this  pregnancy  was  to  me ! 
One  early  morning  I  awoke  and  saw  her  lying 
asleep  by  my  side,  and  on  her  belly  were  traced 
the  first  lines  of  the  new  Life.  As  she  lay  there, 
with  this  plastic  sign  of  the  coming  child  incar- 
nate on  her  lovely  body,  I  was  filled  with  a  wild 
exultation,  and  I  clasped  her  passionately  in 
my  arms. 

How  can  I  account  for  the  intense  joy  I  felt 
in  what  was  to  her  at  the  time  a  conscious  bur- 

[36] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


den*?  I  did  not  reason  about  it.  I  could  not 
have  explained  it  satisfactorily  to  myself. 
Why  should  I  rejoice  in  the  discomfiture  of  the 
creature  I  loved?  It  was  perhaps  the  uncon- 
scious knowledge,  the  instinct  for  life  which 
made  me  ecstatic — I  knew  without  thought  that 
greater  life  had  been  meted  out  to  her,  to  me, 
to  all.  I  was  glad  that  she  was  to  be  destroyed, 
so.  that  she  might  rise  again  from  the  ashes  of 
her  old  unconscious  conservatism.  "Each  man 
kills  the  thing  he  loves,"  wrote  the  poet,  but  he 
also  renders  possible  for  the  beloved  another 
and  a  larger  life.  Thus  destruction  and  re- 
birth go  hand  in  hand,  and  so  I  could  not  find 
it  in  my  heart  to  regret,  as  she  lay  weeping  in 
my  arms. 

Life  is  spiritual.  The  simple  things  are  the 
great  mysteries.  What  must  happen  is  the 
only  beautiful.  The  accidental  is  never  lovely. 
Her  first  pregnancy  was  to  me  a  source  of  never- 
ending  wonder  and  delight.  The  richness,  the 

[37] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


color,  the  quiet  of  it!  The  sensitive  calmness 
that  pervaded  her  whole  being!  The  lovely 
adjustment  of  what  she  had  been  to  what  she 
was  about  to  be.  What  poise  at  each  step,  what 
breathing,  expanding  life!  How  she  seemed 
in  deep  unconsciousness  to  brood  like  a  spirit 
over  her  wonderful  body  —  the  body  that  was  as 
much  a  part  of  her  as  her  spirit.  It  was  her 
spirit,  as  her  spirit  was  her  body,  —  both  were 
different  aspects  of  the  same. 

It  was  a  time  of  weeping  sensibility.  A 
slight  intrusion  of  anything  not  a  part  of  her 
enlarging  nature  brought  quick  tears  and 
seemed  to  cast  a  shadow  over  the  pervading  sun- 
light of  her  condition.  I  remember,  as  we  sat 
one  day  under  a  pine  tree,  I  threw  at  her  in 
play  a  light  little  cone  which  barely  touched 
her  life-breathing  skin.  But  it  was  enough  to 
disturb  the  powers  that  were  intent  on  their 
wonderful  purpose.  And  the  tears  that  fol- 
lowed were  a  silent  and  unconscious  rebuke.  I 

[38] 


jf.         /.  .  A 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


who  should  have  guarded  her  against  any  un- 
friendly intrusion  was  guilty  of  a  deep  offense. 
She  did  not  say  so,  perhaps  did  not  think  so, 
but  her  whole  being  knew  so.  The  sin  was 
greater  because  not  intended.  I  and  the  rest 
of  external  Nature  were  in  duty  bound  to  be 
more  .sensitive.  And,  of  course,  she  was  pro- 
foundly right.  The  great  sins  are  unconscious 
and  inevitable,  due  to  the  coarseness  of  the  Uni- 
verse. 

The  throwing  of  the  cone  was  symbolic  of 
much  of  my  relation  to  the  woman  I  loved.  In 
moments  of  intensity  I  felt  the  spiritual  mean- 
ing of  all  Life,  and  at  such  times  I  could  un- 
derstand, at  least,  how  to  act  with  sensibility 
towards  her.  But  much  of  the  time  I  was  care- 
lessly throwing  figurative  cones,  projecting  acts 
and  thoughts  which  were  intruders,  which  did 
not  make  a  sweet  part  of  the  complex,  the  total 
content  of  her  nature,  but  were  hostile  to  it. 
Perhaps  it  was  this  which  made  our  relation  so 

-L^*Jjs~*J(  T^J^UVU^U^  ^Lte,-,  .<^j**~5' 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


often  a  troubled  one,  and  which  has  left  in  me 
a  deep,  lingering  sense  of  doubt  of  her  love  for 
me.  She  has  never  accepted  my  Form,  my  es- 
sential Self,  as  beautiful.  Flashes  in  my  acts, 
thoughts  and  feelings  have  some  approach  to 
what  is  friendly  to  her  spirit,  but  the  whole 
thing  is  not  sensitized  and  intensified  enough  to 
form  the  blue  flame  of  perfection  which  her 
soul  desires.^ 

And  my  coarse  conceptions  and  brutal  acts 
were  of  far  greater  dimensions  than  those  of 
the  cone.  I  demanded  a  continuity  of  emo- 
tion and  a  constantly  repeated  experience.  For 
me  there  must  needs  be  something  significantly 
active;  in  me  always  was  a  restless  reaching 
•out,  a  striving  to  connect  myself  with  some- 
thing foreign;  in  a  vain,  unconscious  hope  of 
finding  the  rich  peace  that  did  not  exist  in  my 
own  soul,  I  went  out  to  every  passing  thing, 
seeking  an  unattainable  equilibrium.  Only 
restlessly  man  realizes  himself,  wrote  Goethe. 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


Only  by  connection  with  outside  things  does 
the  male  come  to  the  consciousness  of  himself, 
if  he  be  a  pure  male,  which  is  an  ugly  misfor- 
tune. And  the  only  way  he  rids  himself  of  this 
undesirable  purity  is  by  the  disillusion  bound 
up  in  his  nameless,  continuous  superficial  acts. 
He  ever  approaches  but  never  attains  the  brood- 
ing dignity  and  sensitive  peace  of  the  pregnant 
woman. 

The  soul  of  every  beautiful  thing  is  quiet. 
Much  of  the  time  she  was  so  quiet  and  so  un- 
responsive that  there  was  no  place  for  me  in 
her  presence.  Often  I  went  away  from  her, 
irritated  by  her  very  perfection;  by  her  self- 
sufficiency  and  calm;  went  away  from  what  I 
loved  and  what  I  prized,  to  occupy  myself  with 
transient  things,  experiences  and  strangers — 
with  work,  with  women,  and  with  £>oon  com- 
panions ! 

These  were  the  cones  of  more  serious  charac- 
ter that  I  threw  into  the  face  of  this  womanly 

[41] ' 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


woman !  And  it  is  what  many  a  man  has  done 
before  and  since.  In  him  it  is  the  love  of  life 
and  of  play.  In  play,  he  throws  his  cones,  as 
the  child  gleefully  tears  from  the  butterfly  its 
gorgeous  wings.  In  cruel  play  he  seeks  and 
seeks,  seeking  self-realization  wherever  he  can 
find  it;  going  through  his  Pilgrim's  Progress, 
hoping  for  the  Impossible,  finding  the  Illusion. 
And  in  this  play  he  is  able  to  continue,  to  ap- 
pear to  go  further,  through  the  unconscious  help 
of  the  woman  he  loves!  To  live  intimately 
with  a  woman  is  to  learn  an  instinctive  subtlety 
of  approach  to  all  of  life,  to  work,  to  the  un- 
derstanding of  art  and  of  the  problems  of  so- 
ciety, to  the  more  complete  friendship  with 
men  and  with  other  women. 

Yes,  with  other  women!  This  is  not  the 
truth  as  written  down  in  the  sentimental  story- 
books of  life.  It  is  not  what  we  teach  our 
young  men,  nor,  for  some  obscure  reason,  is  it 
what  we  desire  to  believe.  It  is  contrary  to  the 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


fictions  of  Romance.  If  it  has  beauty,  it  is  the 
beauty  of  a  grimmer  Realism.  It  possesses  the 
quality  of  deep  irony,  that  she  should  help  her 
lover  to  Others!  And  that  thereby  Others 
should  receive  more!  But  the  real  romance 
lies  in  the  return  to  the  Beloved.  Her  errant 
Lover  is  a  Retriever  who  brings  rich  gifts  from 
the  world  to  lay  at  the  feet  of  his  Mistress. 

As  I  went  in  and  out  of  the  unformed  places 
of  the  world,  in  the  obscurities  and  half-lights 
of  the  cities  of  men  and  women,  I  gathered  up 
stray  flashes  and  suggestions  and  carried  them 
piously  home  to  her,  as  the  child  on  the  beach 
rushes  to  his  mother  with  his  latest  find,  some 
delicately  traced  shell  perhaps,  for  her  to  ad- 
mire. If  I  went  away  from  her,  irritated  by 
her  inexpressive  calm,  by  the  far-away  brood- 
ing of  her  soul,  ,and  feverishly  sought  a  cafe- 
companion,  whose  abrupt  and  fragmentary  ex- 
periences combined  into  form  through  my  eager 
sympathy,  a  part  of  the  pleasure  and  the  im- 

[43] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


pulse  that  drove  me  to  it  was  to  bring  it  back 
to  her. 

To  bring  it  back  to  her,  to  please,  interest  and 
disturb  her!  To  exhibit  myself,  my  mental 
and  imaginative  resources,  to  arouse  her  ad- 
miration, to  stimulate  her  senses,  to  excite  her 
amorousness,  to  awaken  and  challenge  her  per- 
fection! To  contribute  to  her  pregnancy,  not 
only  of  the  body,  but  of  the  soul  and  mind, 
gave  me  a  deep  excitement  and  a  satisfaction 
that  passes  understanding. 

And  her  brooding  soul,  the  soul  of  the  artist 
and  the  woman,  working  on  forms  both  physi- 
cal and  spiritual,  took  what  came  to  her,  both 
pain  and  pleasure,  and  wove  it  insensibly  into 
the  harmony  of  her  being.  At  a  later  time,  it 
was  difficult,  perhaps  impossible,  for  her  to  wel- 
come all  I  tried  to  force  upon  her,  but  during 
the  first  years  of  our  married  life,  she  took  it  all 
very  much  as  she  breathed,  naturally,  toler- 
antly, with  quiet  understanding,  never  failing 

[44] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


to  remain  herself,  but  making  room  for  the  for- 
eign things  that  came  to  her  through  me. 

I  wonder  if  it  is  not  true  that  the  most  diffi- 
cult art  in  the  world  is  the  art  of  human  rela- 
tions. What  we  call  art  is  mere  child's  play  in 
comparison.  And  a  human  relationship  is 
never  finished,  as  long  as  it  remains  alive. 
There  is  a  never-ceasing,  strenuous  re-making, 
re-creating.  It  tests  everything  there  is  in  a 

man  to  live  artistically  with  a  woman,  and  it  y^jz 

J 

calls  out  all  the  art  of  a  woman  to  insist  that 
her  relations  with  a  man  shall  have  essential 
form. 

Patience  is  as  necessary  to  the  art  of  love  as 
it  is  to  any  other  art.  One  may  throw  off  fine 
sketches  impulsively,  nervously,  but  there  is  a 
wide  difference  between  the  sketch  and  the  fin- 
ished thing.  We  find  painters  and  writers  who 
have  suggestive  ideas  but  who  never  put  enough 
enduring  intensity  into  their  work  to  give  it  es- 
sential form.  So,  too,  in  the  art  of  love.  The 

[45] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


rule  in  love  as  in  the  minor  arts — these  minor 
arts  being  poetry,  painting,  sculpture  and  music 
— the  rule  in  love  is  the  sketch.  Very  few  lov- 
ers go  beyond  the  sketch.  Few  have  the  en- 
during power,  the  artistic  patience  to  build  the 
relation  into  an  essential  form.  It  is  perhaps 
for  this  reason  that  love  is  not  regarded  as  an 
art  at  all.  It  is  too  difficult. 

Men  and  women  fall  in  love  with  one  an- 
other. They  catch  glimpses  of  that  most  beau- 
tiful thing — that  unseen  thing — the  soul  of  the 
opposite  sex  as  incarnate  in  the  body — and  un- 
der the  excitement  of  that  perception,  they  are 
in  love.  But  a  glimpse  is  a  glimpse,  and  it 
passes  quickly,  in  a  day,  in  a  year.  It  passes 
if  it  remains  thus  simple:  if  it  remains  merely 
that  vision  of  beauty.  For  beauty  grown  fa- 
miliar is  no  longer  beauty.  It  is  tedium.  It 
no  longer  enhances ;  it  no  longer  awakens,  beck- 
ons, no  longer  leads  one  on. 

So  most  lovers  tire  quickly.     They  know 

[46] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


love's  sad  satiety,  but  if  they  are  real  lovers, 
though  not  artists  in  love,  they  must  pass  on 
restlessly  from  one  woman  to  another,  from 
one  man  to  another,  seeking  an  impossible  sat- 
isfaction, restlessly,  feverishly.  They  are  the 
sketch-makers.  They  who  have  the  amorous 
insight,  the  love  impulse,  are  usually  of  this  es- 
sentially restless  kind.  They  are  the  minor 
artists  in  love,  not  the  great  shapers,  the  pa- 
tient formers  of  Life. 

But  to  the  artist-lover  his  Mistress  is  always 
unfamiliar.  Into  her  goes  all  his  changing  ex- 
perience. She  is  remodeled  in  his  eyes  from 
period  to  period.  He  sees  in  the  One  the  in- 
carnation of  the  Many.  Impatient  perhaps, 
superficially,  yet  deeply  he  is  patient,  for  he 
builds  his  work  of  art,  and  is  passionately  con- 
tent to  build  on,  if  it  takes  an  eternity. 

Impatiently  I  threw  at  her  all  the  cones  I 
could  gather  along  the  Road  of  Life.  I  rest- 
lessly strove  to  disturb  her,  in  her  ideas,  in  her 

[47] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


feelings;  beyond  all  else  I  passionately  wished 
to  destroy  her  aloofness,  her  quiet  coolness ;  even 
in  her  pregnancy  I  would  not  leave  her  alone. 
When  I  could  no  longer  endure  her  endurance, 
when  her  love  of  solitude  and  her  almost  un- 
canny quiet,  aroused  me  into  a  kind  of  unrea- 
soning indignation,  I  would,  as  I  have  said, 
rush  off  and  precipitate  myself  into  some  sort 
of  restless  adventuring;  then  return  and  give 
her  the  disturbing  result  of  my  experiences. 
But  underneath  my  restlessness  and  my  conven- 
tional infidelities,  there  lay  always  the  deep  pas- 
sionate will  for  an  enduring  union,  based  upon 
her  continuously  changing  strangeness,  the  won- 
derful strangeness,  the  progressively  beautiful 
strangeness  of  her  nature. 


[48] 


Chapter  IF 


N  our  little  apartment,  in  one  of  the 
noisiest  of  New  York  streets,  she 
waited  quietly  for  the  coming  of  the 
child.  The  place  had  no  elevator  and  one  of 
my  clearest  memories  is  the  significant  diffi- 
culty with  which  she  ascended  the  stairs !  She 
moved  with  the  dignified  slowness  of  uncon- 
scious Nature.  We  used  to  walk  or  rather  vi- 
brate round  the  block  together  for  her  ominous 
exercise  every  evening,  so  that  the  child  might 
be  well  settled  down  into  her  womb.  Then, 
after  the  important  task  of  climbing  the  stairs, 
and  the  less  difficult,  but  still  laborious  prep- 
aration for  bed,  she  would  lie  back,  seeking  in 
vain,  complete  comfort ;  full  of  quiet,  full  of  a 
wonderful  sufficiency,  but  withal  always  un- 

[49] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


comfortable,  with  a  discomfort  as  quiet  as  her 
pleasures !  It  was  a  strange,  a  beautiful,  a  la- 
borious time! 

Then,  in  the  early  evening,  with  her  book 
and  her  cigarette,  and  her  quietly  insistent  bur- 
den, what  place  was  there  for  me  ?  To  be  with 
her  always  at  such  times  would  have  seemed 
shameful,  even  to  me.  I  remember  how  often 
I  appeared  to  myself  trivial  and  ridiculous,  un- 
kind and  superficial,  because  I  wanted  to  be 
actively  with  her,  because  I  wanted  her  to  be 
actively  with  me! — to  follow  my  restless  talk, 
to  see  the  pickpocket  or  the  Yiddish  poet  as  I 
saw  them,  to  sympathize  with  my  quick  sym- 
pathy for  the  drunk  in  the  saloon,  or  the  care- 
less girl  of  my  acquaintance! 

Even  to  me  in  my  eagerness  I  felt  the  shame- 
ful impossibility  of  it.  Big  with  child,  she 
seemed  beautiful  in  a  new  way, — and  what  a 
way!  The  inexpressive  significance,  the  won- 
der of  it!  So  when  I  went  away  from  her 

[50] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


many  evenings,  leaving  her  as  quiet  as  her  bur- 
den would  permit,  it  was  with  a  kind  of  hu- 
miliation. Often  have  I  sallied  forth  into 
what  was  then  to  me  romantic  to  a  degree, — 
the  streets  at  night,  with  all  their  fanciful  pos- 
sibilities of  strange  meetings,  of  mental  and 
sensuous  suggestions,  to  meet  some  man  in  a 

CJO  * 

cafe,  to  follow  out  the  fascinating  track  to  what 
I  hoped  would  be  literature;  to  what  filled  me 
with  sketches,  sketches  of  life,  mainly  unre- 
corded, but  always  stimulating  and  exciting. 

I  wanted  these  experiences,  but  as  I  left  her 
for  them,  I  felt,  as  I  have  said,  a  kind  of  shame 
and  humiliation.  I  seemed  to  myself  to  be  en- 
gaged in  trivialities.  I  could  not  help  com- 
paring myself,  restlessly  looking  into  the  back- 
alleys  and  by-streets  of  the  town  and  of  the 
world  of  human  nature,  with  her,  lying,  volu- 
minous, portentous,  waiting,  and  quietly 
brooding.  I  was  forced  into  the  street,  partly 
through  my  nervous  curiosity  and  fever  for  pos- 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


sible  glimpses,  partly  through  my  consciousness 
that  she  needed  more  to  withdraw  herself  from 
me,  much  of  the  time,  than  to  be  with  me.  And 
both  these  causes  did  not  feed  my  vanity  nor 
increase  my  dignity  in  my  own  eyes.  If  I  had 
not  been  impelled  to  want  these  restless  con- 
tacts, and  had  been  able  to  be  an  essential,  in- 
tegral part  of  her  quiet  building  in  a  great  proc- 
ess, I  should  have  been  what  my  deeper  imag- 
ination desired.  I  should  have  been  a  part  of 
Beauty  itself!  But  I  habitually  fell  away 
from  my  ideal,  was  continuously  thrown  off 
into  the  amusing  futilities  of  manifold  adven- 
tures. If  I  could  only  have  been  with  child 
myself!  If  we  could  have  been  with  child  to- 
gether !  That  would  have  satisfied  my  deepest 
instincts,  would  have  made  us  one.  But,  lim- 
ited by  inexorable  Nature,  I  was  forced  to  try 
to  impregnate  myself  in  a  figurative  sense,  to 
wander  about  the  world,  led  on  by  the  instinc- 
tive need  of  being  suggested,  of  being  stimu- 

[52] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


lated  into  mental  and  temperamental  fruitful- 
ness,  into  giving  birth  to  ideas ! — pale  consola- 
tions ! 

If  I  write  sometimes  in  this  narrative  about 
the  art  of  love,  do  not  imagine  that  I  think  I 
know  anything  about  it;  nor  that  in  any  way  I 
regard  myself  as  successful  in  this  great  shaping 
process.  But  I  have  had,  and  have,  a  passion- 
ate, never-failing  desire  to  do  this  almost  im- 
possible thing.  I  see  my  errors  and  am  not  sure 
of  the  final  result.  Often  I  have  stood  on  the 
brink  of  failure,  and  I  do  so  at  this  moment, 
filled  with  a  kind  of  helpless  dread,  not  know- 
ing how  to  shape  the  clay  of  life,  to  draw  the 
line  that  is  instinctively  right,  that  gives  the 
vital  equilibrium  of  art.  I  feel  at  times  that 
this  terrific  longing  of  mine  is  a  criminal  in- 
stinct. Is  it  not  a  crime  for  a  man  to  want  to 
be  pregnant?  To  want  to  be  mutually  preg- 
nant? Does  it  not  show  a  passionate  invasive- 
ness,  an  almost  incredible  desire  for  violation  of 

[53] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


another's  personality?  Is  it  not  terrible  and 
ugly,  rather  than  beautiful?  Perhaps  it  is 
both. 

And  is  it  not  a  terrible  thing  to  be  dependent 
on  another  human  being?  When  we  find  our- 
selves going  in  that  direction,  should  we  not 
strenuously  call  ourselves  to  account,  and  tear 
the  bondage  from  our  breasts?  But  the  greater 
the  need  to  do  so,  the  more  difficult  it  is;  it  is 
really  taken  from  our  will  and  we  are  the  prey 
of  circumstance. 

I  am  now  writing  many  years  after  the  pres- 
ent stage  in  the  story,  to  which  I  shall  return. 
I  am  writing  on  the  brink  of  the  abyss,  for  I 
am  at  a  moment  when,  my  love  as  strong  as  ever, 
I  perceive  with  peculiar  intensity,  the  loneli- 
ness of  our  lives,  the  lack  of  contact,  the  com- 
plete isolation  in  which  her  spirit  dwells,  and 
the  kind  of  shrinking  that  my  approach  causes 
in  her.  Oh,  why  do  I  need  the  Impossible? 
Why,  oh  why?  She  so  often  tells  me,  and 

[54] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


means  it,  for  she  is  as  clear  of  guile  and  as  can- 
did as  the  sunlight,  that  we  could  live  a  happy, 
pleasant,  affectionate  life  together,  if  it  were 
not  for  my  obscure,  metaphysical  needs,  my  un- 
explainable  passions  and  the  growing  restless- 
ness which  deprives  her  of  the  opportunity  for 
spiritual  seclusion.  She  needs  to  be  emotion- 
:/X  ally  alone,  most  of  the  time.  Why  cannot  I 
endure  it? 

I  can  endure  now  even  less  than  before;  for 
my  hope  of  disturbing  her  into  the  need  for  me 
that  I  have  for  her  is  growing  less,  is  almost 
gone.  And  I  am  perhaps  undergoing  what  may 
be  called  the  change  of  life  in  a  man.  There 
is  no  physical  difference,  as  far  as  I  can  see,  but 
there  is  a  poignant  sadness  and  my  vision  of  the 
world  is  changing.  It  is  all  as  beautiful  as  be- 
fore, but  now  it  is  the  beauty  of  terror.  The 
universe  seemed  so  friendly,  but  now  it  seems 
to  me  that  all  Nature  is  at  war  with  man,  and 
that  we  need  to  gather  together  and  cheer  and 

[55] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


protect  and  comfort  one  another  against  the 
external  enemy  to  whom  ere  long  we  must  suc- 
cumb. We  are  fighting  a  losing  fight,  and  we 
need  sympathy  and  love  and  friendship. 

It  is  perhaps  that  which  makes  my  need  of 
her  almost  fierce.  When  the  universe  fails,  the 
need  of  a  personal  relation  becomes  so  intense 
that  all  peace  is  lost.  It  is  said  that  a  woman 
who  is  passing  through  the  change  of  life  often 
undergoes  an  exaggeration,  a  stimulation  of 
sexual  desire.  And  perhaps  with  a  man  his 
need  for  an  intense  exclusive  relation  grows 
painfully  greater,  as  the  fire  flares  up  into  a 
brighter  flame  just  before  it  is  extinguished  for- 
ever and  passes  into  the  coldness  of  old  age. 

As  I  write  these  lines  I  know  the  truth  does 
not  fully  appear.  I  have  an  unquenchable  de- 
sire to  tell  the  truth  but  it  is  something  that 
quite  surpasses  my  power  of  expression.  The 
impression  of  blackness  that  these  last  pages 
give  is  not  wholly  faithful.  Blackness  is  only 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


one  color  in  the  compound.  I  see  the  whole 
thing  as  very  beautiful,  even  separation  and 
death,  but  I  also  see  the  poignant  sadness  and 
the  quality  of  terror  and  tragedy. 

As  the  time  of  her  deliverance  from  the  first 
born  approached,  a  minor  note  of  quiet  gayety 
modified  the  harsher  noises  of  life.  It  was  as 
if  the  child,  which  long  since  had  begun  to  move 
and  stir  in  the  womb,  had  begun  to  prevail, 
and  to  insist  upon  a  smiling  interpretation  and 
a  cheerful  attitude.  The  atmosphere  of  chil- 
dren, in  which  our  relation  has  existed  for  an 
eternity,  began  to  form  before  the  first  of  our 
four  children  was  born.  As  we  both  together 
sometimes  felt  the  pulsations  of  the  new  life, 
and  she  the  springing  within  and  the  urge  and 
the  movement  it  was  the  faint  suggestion  as  of 

**JU 

a  bouncing  little  cherub  playing  with  his  blocks 
about  the  room  or  trying  to  dive  through  the 
window  pane!  And  we  would  smile  together, 
she  one  of  those  long,  slow,  tender  smiles  which 

[57] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


went  through  her  whole  body  and  soul,  and 
completely  satisfied  her,  and  I  would  smile  more 
quickly,  a  smile  tending  to  translate  itself  into 
a  more  strenuous  expression  and  a  forbidden 
embrace ! 

And  slowly  and  richly,  like  a  well-filled  ar- 
gosy, she  would  sometimes  move  with  me  to  the 
cafe  for  dinner,  and  throughout  our  talk,  or 
more  exactly  my  talk,  the  unborn  would  have 
its  effect.  It  was  not  like  the  old  days  of  my 
pre-nuptial  wooing  when  my  words  flowed  in 
torrential  masses  and  the  atmosphere  was  filled 
with  the  excitement  of  half  ideas  and  amorous 
hopes.  Into  these  was  introduced  a  subtle 
modification.  The  shadow  of  the  child  was 
cast  on  the  high  lights  like  gray  on  a  water 
color,  bringing  in  a  transfused  softening.  And 
my  male  companions  who  came  alone  or  with 
their  wives  to  our  little  apartment,  underwent 
the  same  influence,  and  there  was  not  so  much 
wine  and  whiskey  consumed,  and  not  so  much 

[58] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


boisterous  talk  about  it  and  about.  The  un- 
seen deeper  meaning  made  its  demand  and  in- 
sisted upon  harmony  in  the  surroundings. 

Pregnancy  came  to  seem  to  me  such  a  nor- 
mal, inevitable  state  that  when  I  saw  slim 
girls  in  the  street  or  young  married  women  who 
had  not  yet  begun  their  process  of  completion, 
it  was  with  a  sort  of  pity.  They  seemed  so 
wanting,  so  forlorn  and  hoping.  Where  was 
the  male  with  his  impregnating  fierceness1? 
Why  should  such  wanting  creatures  go  thinly 
about  the  world1? 

So  natural  and  beautiful  did  her  condition 
seem  to  me  that  when  her  pains  began,  they 
took  me  by  surprise,  though  we  had  been  ex- 
pecting them  for  many  days.  It  was  as  if  some 
strange  eruption,  some  volcanic  accident  had  oc- 
curred, something  quite  contrary  to  the  placid 
course  of  Nature.  It  was  as  exciting  and  dire- 
ful as  a  Revolution !  Yet,  as  I  held  her  hands 
when  the  recurrent,  ever-increasing  pains  re- 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


turned,  she  in  a  strange  and  marvelous  way, 
maintained  that  calm,  that  breathing,  inex- 
pressible quiet,  at  which  I  wonder  and  shall 
wonder  until  my  dying  day,  even  though,  at 
times,  it  has  almost  driven  me  mad ! 

And  when,  sternly  driven  by  the  doctor  into 
the  adjoining  room,  I  heard  her  low,  uncon- 
scious moans,  as  the  child  came  ripping  from 
her  womb, — deep,  suffering  sounds  which  did 
not  seem  to  come  from  her  but  from  the  world 
in  travail,  from  the  body  of  Nature  itself, 
sounds  not  so  much  human  as  cosmic,  even  then 
there  was  no  turmoil  nor  violence  nor  nervous- 
ness. It  seemed  deeply  impersonal, — the  pain, 
the  sound — to  come  from  the  depths  of  life  and 
death,  from  a  great,  a  terrible  distance,  and 
without  petulance,  too  deep,  too  all-embracing 
to  be  noisy. 

I  afterwards  knew  that  she  had  been  at  the 
point  of  death,  that  the  hemorrhage  which  so 
often  accompanies  the  first  child-birth  had 

[60] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


nearly  carried  her  into  the  unknown.  She  real- 
ized it  at  the  time,  felt  herself  going,  going, 
but  there  was  no  alarm  or  uneasiness.  It  was 
like  fading  away  into  her  elements,  passing  into 
something  almost  as  much  herself  as  what  she 
knew,  into  something  familiar,  friendly;  going 
out,  but  not  going  out  into  the  cold;  perhaps 
into  the  cool,  the  moist,  the  colorful,  pleasing 
half-light,  half-life,  which  lacks  nervousness 
and  pain — the  elementary,  the  elemental,  the 
Cosmic,  lacking  the  meaningless  stridency  of 
civilization,  possessing  the  long,  quiet  line  of 
primitiveness !  She  was  so  civilized  that  she 
could  easily  dispense  with  civilization,  so 
sophisticated  that  she  could  quietly  welcome 
the  approach  of  the  uttermost  simple,  the  dis- 
solving into  the  elements  of  existence! 

How  I  loved  her,  how  I  admired  her!  Be- 
yond everything  else  how  I  liked  her!  She 
pleased  my  taste  so  utterly.  She  thrilled  me 
with  excited  pleasure  even  at  the  moment  when 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


I  feared  for  her  life !  As  I  heard  the  sharp  cry 
of  the  new-born,  like  a  clear  figure  in  the  fore- 
ground against  the  deep  meaning  of  the  moth- 
er's impersonal  silence,  and  rushing  into  the 
room,  saw  the  strange  struggling  baby  bran- 
dished aloft  by  the  doctor,  and  the  pale  face 
of  the  woman  in  the  bed,  the  danger  of  it  all, 
the  beauty  of  it  all,  almost  overpowered  me. 

And  then  for  days  and  days  I  rushed  about, 
doing  meaningless  but  necessary  things;  prod- 
ding the  strangely  stupid  nurse,  fiercely  de- 
manding of  her  punctuality  and  carefulness; 
alert,  restless,  awake,  watchful,  untiring,  but 
always  with  a  deep  impatience,  always  feeling 
myself  inessential,  trivial,  doing  these  neces- 
sary errands,  but  withheld  from  her,  not  able 
to  commune  with  her,  not  able  to  be  a  part  of 
her;  having  no  longer  any  relation  with  her,y  a 
mere  spectator  of  her  importance,  not  an  inte- 
gral part  of  it ! 

I  wonder  if  I  have  not  been  a  mere  spectator 

[62] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


all  my  life!  —  a  super-heated  observer?  Have 
I  ever  been  a  part  of  her  real  life?  Is  not  my 
recurrent  feeling  of  almost  intolerable  loneli- 
ness an  index,  a  sign  of  her  remoteness?  In 
her  arms  only  have  I  been  able  to  feel  united 
with  something  not  myself,  bigger  than  myself, 
a  part  of  something  not  myself,  my  larger  self. 
Under  the  illusion  of  the  senses  and  the  amor- 
ous fancy  I  have  felt  a  real  bond.  Was  it, 
after  all,  merely  an  illusion?  Who  knows? 
Perhaps  it  was  a  real  union,  a  real  oneness,  but 
with  difficulty  maintained,  impossible  to  main- 
tain; continuously,  inevitably  falling  apart, 
slipping  back  again  into  tragic,  hopeless  sepa« 
rateness. 

JL    -     C^^4^^^^^ 


Chapter  V 

HAVE  written  something  of  the 
art  of  love  and  of  its  difficulty. 
One  aspect  of  love,  what  is  called 
the  sensual  side,  is  much  neglected  by  almost 
all  men,  especially  men  of  our  race  and  civiliza- 
tion. To  exploit  the  possibilities  of  a  physical 
relation  is  supposed  to  be  indelicate  or  inde- 
cent. Reticence  and  unwillingness  is  con- 
founded with  chastity  and  purity.  Our  early 
sex  relations  are  as  a  rule  hasty  and  unloving, 
with  no  subtlety  or  sensuousness,  merely  vio- 
lent, nervous  and  egotistic.  Sexual  life  seems 
therefore  to  most  inexperienced  women,  even 
when  they  live  with  a  man  they  love,  incompre- 
hensible and  unpleasant.  They  often  pass 
years  without  the  specific  reaction,  the  complete 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


relaxation   and   sensuous-spiritual   satisfaction 

without  which  the  sexual  embrace  has  little 

i 

aesthetic  meaning. 

So  that  women  often  live  with  a  man  for 
many  years  and  have  several  children  and  yet 
know  little  or  nothing  of  the  physical  side  of 
love.  And  if  the  physical  could  be  separated 
from  the  material  and  the  spiritual  this  would 
be  of  little  importance.  But  words  represent 
merely  abstractions  from  experience,  which  is 
a  complex  flux  of  all  things,  held  in  solution. 
To  the  sensitively  developed  human  being  a 
merely  sensual  relation  is  impossible;  it  is  in- 
extricably connected  with  emotion,  thought  and 
imagination,  with  what  we  call  the  spiritual. 
And  neither  relation  is  possible  to  the  full  un- 
less the  other  is  at  the  full,  too. 

A  beautiful  love  relation  therefore  is  impos- 
sible without  a  delicate  sexual  adjustment.  It 
is  the  basis,  the  superstructure  upon  which  fine 
architectural  forms  are  reared.  And  it  is  not 

[65] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


an  easy  thing  for  a  civilized  man  and  woman 
to  have  an  adequate  sensual  relation.  Each 
human  being  is  a  peculiar,  irreproducible  in- 
strument, different  from  all  other  instruments, 
capable  of  giving  out  music  of  an  original  qual- 
ity but  needing  the  right  touch,  the  right  player, 
who  understands  the  particular  instrument  upon 
which  he  is  playing.  If  he  plays  artistically, 
beautiful  spiritual  harmony  results,  beautiful 
relations,  beautiful  children,  and  a  beautiful  at- 
titude to  Nature  and  Society. 

Art  is  long,  and  we  do  not  at  once  make  the 
best  connection  with  our  lovers.  When  I  first 
met  her,  I  was  not  at  all  conscious  of  any  sen- 
sual desire.  My  relations  with  women  had 
been  casual,  fragmentary  and  nervous,  and  I 
had  not  learned  to  associate  physical  inter- 
course with  spiritual  emotion.  So  that,  at 
first,  our  relations  were  lyrical  and  light  on  the 
sensual  side,  playful  and  athletic,  smiling,  and 
to  her  a  little  foolish  and  unmeaning.  They 

[66] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


were  not  brutal,  but  to  her  they  did  not  seem  to 
have  any  particular  appeal.  She  did  not  feel 
the  sad,  colorful  need  of  full  self-and-sex  ex- 
pression and  in  her  eyes  was  not  the  longing 
left  by  long  nights  of  mutual  giving-up.  It 
was  in  large  measure  because  I  had  not  learned 
to  be  patient  and  quiet,  to  study  her  needs  and 
to  care  more  for  her  pleasure  and  emotion  than 
for  my  own,  not  realizing  that  the  two  were  in- 
extricably dependent,  one  upon  the  other. 

It  is  probable  that  women  instinctively  know 
more  than  men  of  the  art  of  love  on  the  physi- 
cal side.  (  They  know  that  without  the  quiet- 
ness of  the  soul  it  is  nothing.  The  deep  quiet 

woman    with    whom    I    lived    unconsciously 

* 
shaped  my  sex  relation  with  her.     She  taught 

me  the  subtlety  of  the  approach,  the  constancy 
and  the  continuation  of  it,  and  she  herself  con- 
tinually grew  in  sensuous  knowledge.  After 
the  birth  of  the  first  child,  when  she  had  recov- 
ered her  health,  how  her  sensuous  beauty  and 

[67] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


her  sensuous  knowledge  seemed  almost  more 
than  I  could  bear!  How  brilliant  and  sensual 
her  skin,  how  wonderful  her  instinctive  art,  and 
yet  it  was  not  then  the  full  efflorescence,  not  yet 
what  she  was  destined  to  realize,  when  our  re- 
lations grew  more  complex  and  more  distress- 
ful, and  when  she  had  become  aroused  by  other 
men;  then  the  whole  rich  consciousness  devel- 
oped and  I  was  the  gainer  as  well  as  the  suf- 
ferer. 

The  first  child  deepened  her  nature,  and 
each  successive  child  added  to  the  content  of 
her  consciousness.  Although  it  is  getting  ahead 
of  my  story  I  cannot  refrain  from  picturing  the 
singular  enhancement,  sensual  and  imagina- 
tive, that  came  after  the  birth  of  the  third  child, 
a  little  girl  born  in  wonderful  Italy.  The  light 
and  color  of  her  skin  seemed  to  come  from  some 
central  sun  within  and  to  give  her  the  rich,  de- 
structive look  of  a  glorious  fallen  Magdalene, 
which  corresponded  to  the  deeper  knowledge 

[68] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


within  her,  of  life,  of  sensuousness  and  of  hu- 
man character.  Her  beauty  was  then  to  me  no 
pleasure  in  the  charming,  lyrical  sense.  There 
was  no  light,  buoyant  love  in  it,  but  a  biting, 
harassing  insistency,  a  serious,  necessary  yearn- 
ing which  was  as  inexorable  as  the  sea  and  de- 
prived me  utterly  of  all  hope  of  peace  and  of 
all  desire  for  peace.  I  fiercely  demanded  sen- 
sual misery  and  unutterable  impossible  long- 
ing, and  contentment  seemed  triviality,  meant 
only  for  superficial  souls.  And  when  I  saw 
the  look  of  uncontrollable  desire  in  the  faces  of 
other  men,  and  her  quick  and  welcoming  con- 
sciousness of  it,  I  cannot  describe  the  kind  of 
torturing  pleasure  it  gave  me,  as  if  I  were  per- 
mitted glimpses  into  the  terrible  truth,  which 
perhaps  was  destined  to  shatter  me. 

How  different  all  this  was  from  those  April 
days  of  the  honeymoon !  It  seemed  as  if  thou- 
sands of  years  had  intervened,  and  that  just 
because  we  had  been  in  part  successful  in  the 

[69] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


art  of  love,  had  mutually  given  and  taken  and 
partly  destroyed  one  another  and  accepted  from 
and  given  to  others,  and  loved  children  and  art 
and  literature,  and  taken  as  fully  as  we  could 
what  came  to  us  from  life,  just  because  of  all 
that  richness,  our  relation  had  become  one  that 
meant  the  constant  possibility  and  at  times  the 
actuality  of  almost  unbearable  pain ! 

It  seems  to  me  at  times  that  all  I  really  care 
for  is  sensuality  and  ideas,  and  to  me  these  are 
never  unmixed — there  never  come  to  me  ideas 
without  sensuality,  nor  sensuality  without 
ideas.  My  mind  seems  to  have  the  warmth  of 
my  senses  and  to  my  senses  are  lent  a  hue  of 
meaning  given  by  the  constructing  intelligence. 
It  was  this  mixed  field  on  which  she  and  I  really 
met.  Emotionally  we  were  often  far  apart, 
but  always  was  this  keen  interest  together  in 
the  coloring  of  thought  and  the  meaning  of  the 
sensual.  So  that  we  have  been  close  together 

[70] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


without  sentimentality  and  without  what  is\ 
called  romance. 

And  our  relation  has  thus  had  at  least  one 
of  the  results  that  is  highly  desirable.  It  has 
helped  us  to  express  ourselves  impersonally,  has 
helped  our  writing,  our  understanding,  our  cul- 
ture and  our  human  connections,  our  apprecia- 
tion of  children  and  of  Nature.  It  has  done 
more.  It  has  helped  us  to  an  understanding 
of  the  struggle  of  mankind,  and  has  given  us 
social  sympathy.  Indeed  it  is  frequently  true 
of  thoughtful  human  beings  capable  of  the 
rounded  experience  that  is  called  culture,  that 
as  the  youthful  passions — which  are  the  slighter 
passions — subside,  as  our  cruder  interest  in 
women,  hi  boon-companionship,  in  verses  and 
in  art-for-art's  sake,  falls  away  or  dies,  we  turn 
to  the  deeper  personal  relation,  to  social  moral- 
ity, to  God.  Men  of  forty  who  when  younger 
sought  women  and  gold  and  distinction  now  try 
to  dig  deeper  into  one  relation,  fight  with  in- 

[71] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


sistency  for  an  abstract  idea,  for  a  social  pana- 
cea, or  for  a  religion. 

It  was  not  a  mere  coincidence  that  after  the 
coming  of  the  first  child,  my  relations  to  other 
things  than  her,  to  my  friends,  and  to  my  work 
began  to  undergo  if  not  a  change,  at  least  a 
deepening.  I  saw  much  more  in  my  chance 
cafe  companions,  in  the  peddler  or  the  poet  of 
the  Ghetto,  in  the  pickpocket  and  in  the  sub- 
merged generally  than  ever  before.  My  inter- 
est in  my  work,  which  was  formerly  light  and 
suggestive,  a  kind  of  playfulness,  became  more 
serious.  The  psychology  of  the  thief  and  of 
the  revolutionary  immigrant  formerly  amused 
me  as  something  exotic  and  unfamiliar.  The 
boon  companions  and  the  girls  excited  my  senses 
and  satisfied  my  love  of  pleasure.  But  now 
all  these  things  came  to  mean  more  to  me,  to 
connect  themselves  with  my  real  life.  My  inti- 
macy with  her,  the  fact  that  I  was  having  an 
ever-deepening  relationship  with  her,  made  k 

[72] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


impossible  for  me  to  approach  anything  else 
with  free  lightness,  with  superficial  playful- 
ness. Once  for  all,  the  deeper  harmonies  were 
touched  and  they  permeated  more  and  more  all 
my  interests  and  undertakings.  As  serious  in- 
timacy ever  developed  between  her  and  me,  it 
developed  between  me  and  everything  else.  I 
saw  something  in  work  more  significant  than 
art.  Writing  became  for  me  a  human  occupa- 
tion, not  a  matter  of  art,  nor  of  business.  A 
thief  was  a  human  being,  not  a  thief;  a  drunk- 
ard became  a  fine  soul  in  distress,  not  a  drunk- 
ard. An  abandoned  woman  became  a  figure 
about  whom  to  construct  a  better  society,  not  a 
prostitute. 

My  love  for  my  wife,  deepened,  satisfied  and 
exasperated  with  experience,  enabled  me  to  ap- 
proach crime  in  a  passionate  and  a  profoundly 
aesthetic  way.  V.It  led  me  step  by  step  into  what 
is  called  radicalism,  into  an  infidelity  to  the 
conventions  of  my  class.)  To  have  one  purely 

[73] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


passionate  relation  extends  the  impulse  to  be 
pure,  that  is  passionate,  in  all  things.  The  one 
love  leads  one  to  the  love  of  all,  and  the  love  of 
all  re-acts  on  the  love  of  one,  heightening  and 
intensifying  it.  I  saw  everything  in  terms  of 
the  intimate  seriousness  my  relation  with  her 
had  developed  in  my  soul. 

Our  first  trip  to  Italy  when  the  boy  was  a 
year  and  a  half  old  was  a  strange  and  lovely 
blending  of  what  had  been  with  what  was  to 
be.  The  honeymoon  quality  was  still  there, 
but  it  was  more  sensuous  and  more  significant, 
and  for  the  time  being  it  was  not  troubled.  It 
was  in  the  charming  hill  country  where  the  cli- 
mate is  semi-tropical  and  everything  invites  to 
relaxation.  The  many  hills  are  capped  with 
beautiful  old  towns  deserted  largely  of  their 
inhabitants  and  as  pure  in  form  and  color  as 
shells  on  the  beach.  It  represents  a  lovely 
death,  and  over  these  hills  and  through  these 
valleys  we  loved  to  walk.  More  often  I  went 

[74] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


alone,  but  alone  only  after  being  with  her,  in 
her  arms  always  except  on  the  walks.  The  em- 
brace was  as  constant  as  before  our  marriage  and 
far  deeper  and  more  voluptuous.  It  seemed 
to  me  in  that  lovely,  languishing,  liquid  place 
there  were  only  two  realities,  her  embrace  and 
the  hills  with  their  swoon-inducing  atmospheric 
mantle. 

My  feeling  for  those  hills  and  that  relaxing, 
impregnated  air,  was  indistinguishable  from  my 
feeling  for  her.  It  seems  to  me  that  it  was  the 
result  of  it,  that  it  could  not  have  been  without 
it.  \  Without  the  satisfaction  and  relaxation 
after  the  embrace,  I  could  not  have  had  that 
glorious  passiveness,  that  sensuous  receptivity 
in  which  Nature  came  to  me  as  nothing  foreign, 
but  as  part  of  my  blood  and  bone,  as  a  feeling 
from  within/;  Already  my  intimacy  with  her 
was  giving  to  external  nature  a  new  quality 
never  felt  by  me  before.  How  I  returned  to 
her  from  these  walks  and  how  I  went  to  these 

[751 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


walks  from  her!  How  she  sent  me  forth  and 
how  they  brought  me  back!  O,  the  deep,  re- 
laxing sensuousness  of  it!  The  long,  languid 
afternoons,  the  quiet  warm  nights !  And  in  and 
out  of  it  all  was  the  little  boy  breaking  in  on 
our  luxuries  with  his  clear  charm,  interrupt- 
ing and  diverting  his  parents  who  were  caught 
in  a  continuous  moment  of  almost  impersonal 
amorousness,  so  connected  did  it  seem  with  the 
old  town,  the  sky  and  the  semi-tropical  atmos- 
phere ! 

As  I  write  these  memories  of  a  lover  I  realize 
that  the  woman  is  hardly  more  than  a  shadow 
to  the  reader.  Or  rather,  perhaps,  she  is  what 
each  reader  makes  her;  each  lover — and  this 
book  means  nothing  except  to  the  lover — will 
see  in  her  the  particular  woman  about  whom 
he  has  built  his  spiritual  life — the  woman  who 
has  realized  for  him  the  great  adventure.  I 
know  if  I  can  tell  the  inner  truth  to  me  it  will 
be  the  inner  truth  to  every  lover.  To  him  the 

[76] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


doubt,  the  pleasure;  to  him  the  hope,  the  dis- 
illusion, the  pain  and  joy,  as  to  me — the  cer- 
tainty of  her  love  for  him,  the  certainty  of  her 
indifference.  To  him,  as  to  me,  the  beloved 
seems  one  thing  at  one  moment,  another  at  the 
next,  but  always  wonderful,  always  incompre- 
hensible, and  beyond  all  else  perhaps,  strange 
— foreign,  giving  glimpses  always  of  magic 
casements  opening  on  "faery  seas,"  sometimes 
forlorn  or  terrible,  sometimes  warming  and  in- 
finitely consoling. 

The  inevitable  is  the  deepest  mystery;  and 
the  naturalness  of  her  second  pregnancy  begin- 
ning in  these  languorous  Italian  hills  did  not 
take  from  its  wonder;  rather  the  contrary.  This 
time  to  her  the  new  life  was  from  the  first  a 
welcome  thing.  Perhaps  by  now  her  nature 
had  become  adjusted  to  this  intrusion,  so  that 
it  was  no  longer  intrusion  but  completion. 
Fhen,  too,  the  first  born  had  become  a  thing 
beloved  and  the  little  fellow  had  been  rather 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


lonely  and  bored  in  this  to  him  unexciting  quiet, 
and  she  foresaw  for  him  a  play-fellow.  So 
this  second  pregnancy  fitted  in  harmoniously 
with  what  she  felt  in  the  warm  surroundings 
and  what  she  hoped  for  in  the  colorful  future. 

But  these  no  doubt  are  superficial  explana- 
tions. Who  can  tell  or  know  why  she  breathed 
in,  so  to  speak,  this  second  pregnancy  as  she 
breathed  in  the  caressing  air  of  this  semi-tropi- 
cal place1?  Perhaps  she  had  become  a  more  un- 
conscious part  of  Nature  which  does  not  ques- 
tion why  the  seed  bursts  and  grows  in  the  rich, 
moist  earth.  And  her  skin,  giving  light  and 
warmth,  and  suggesting  the  rich  material  within 
from  which  life  springs  was  like  the  sun-bathed 
fields  telling  of  the  damp  pregnancies  under- 
neath! 

But  a  terrible  disturbance  again  awaited  this 
quietly  brooding  soul.  Into  her  expectant 
state  our  daily  interests  wove  themselves  with 
tranquil  ease;  our  literary  work,  and  talks,  our 

[78] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


pleasant  times  with  friends  and  all  the  little 
things  and  momentary  values  which  relieve  and 
put  in  bold  relief  the  vital  things  of  life.  This 
deep  disturbance  was  not  this  time  due  to  me. 
I  threw  no  cone  at  her  in  her  second  period  of 
travail;  nor  did  I  irritate  her  sensibility.  She 
did  not  weep  because  of  me. 

There  came  a  bolt  from  the  void — a  cable- 
gram from  America  telling  of  the  sudden  vio- 
lent death  of  her  beloved  father.  I  remem- 
ber I  brought  her  the  message,  fearing  for 
her  and  for  the  unborn  child,  for  I  knew 
what  that  romantic  man  meant  to  her. 
But  she  took  it  in  the  quiet,  deep  way  with 
which  she  takes  all  serious  things.  She  said 
no  word,  she  did  not  weep,  but  it  went  through 
her  whole  being  and  as  we  both  now  think  af- 
fected deeply  the  temperament  and  character 
and  life  of  the  child  that  was  to  be.  I  have 
always  felt  that  it  was  a  deeper  blow  to  her 
than  if  she  had  expressed  it  more  violently. 

[79] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


She  took  it — as  she  takes  everything — did  not 
throw  it  off  by  successive  paroxysms,  but  wove 
it  into  her  complete  existence,  thereby  coloring 
herself  and  the  child,  introducing  somber  ele- 
ments into  what  her  nature  insisted  should  al- 
ways be  harmonious. 


[80] 


Chapter 


E  left  the  sensuous  charm  of  Italy 
and  went  back  to  nervous  New  York 
and  its  detailed  and  relatively  mean- 
ingless activities,  and  I  again  attempted,  as  I 
have  attempted  periodically  all  through  my 
life,  to  become  a  part  of  the  machinery  of  prac- 
tical existence.  But  the  big  deceptive  gen- 
eralizations of  philosophy,  which  I  needed  in 
my  youth,  as  I  have  explained,  to  attain  equi- 
librium, and  my  subsequent  absorption  in  the 
deep  pathos  of  love,  stood  always  in  my  way 
when  I  honestly  tried  to  be  interested  in  what 
the  world  calls  practical  and  necessary.  But 
to  all  things  I  invariably  tended  to  apply  the 
measure  of  eternity,  and  eternity  spoke  to  me 
through  the  impulses  of  philosophy  and  of  love. 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


So  that  the  spur  of  practical  need,  which  was 
keen  and  constant  enough  to  have  chained  most 
men  to  the  wheel  of  necessary  routine,  acted  on 
me  mainly  as  an  irritant,"  leading  me  into  situa- 
tions, positions,  jobs  as  they  are  lugubriously 
called,  but  never  strong  enough  to  hold  me 
there.  I  was  continually  thrown  off  onto  the 
bosom  of  the  Eternal,  where  only  I  found  sig- 
nificant excitement  and  troubled  peace. 

When  our  second  boy  was  born  I  was  exceed- 
ingly active  in  journalism  and  in  other  futili- 
ties, called  important  by  the  best  people,  and 
a  great  deal  was  happening  to  me,  in  the  ordi- 
nary way.  But  these  important  events  have  left 
no  strong  impression  on  my  memory.  They 
are  vague  and  shadowy  and  have  not  the  quality 
of  value.  I  know  they  happened  mainly  be- 
cause from  time  to  time  I  come  across  some 
record  of  them.  Otherwise  they  would  have 
been  entirely  forgotten ;  have  taken  their  proper 
place  in  general  oblivion. 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


But  what  I  do  remember  as  intensely  as 
though  it  were  happening  to  me  at  this  moment 
is  the  look  of  the  second  child  as  he  came  with 
a  flash  of  noise  into  the  world.  As  the  doctor 
waved  him  in  the  air  to  help  him  take  his  first 
breath  in  this  amazing  place,  he  seemed  to  me 
older  than  anything  I  had  ever  seen  or  imag- 
ined. When  I  first  met  Her  she  had  seemed 
older  and  more  beautiful  and  more  terrible  than 
the  Sphinx,  but  he  seemed  to  go  back  beyond 
all  human  expression  and  to  go  forward  beyond 
it  all,  too,  and  to  represent  the  suffering  essence 
of  Life  itself!  He  was  neither  animal  nor  hu- 
man, but  the  something  from  which  they  both 
come  and  to  which  they  both  go! 

What  a  contrast  he  was  then  and  has  always 
been  to  his  brother !  When  the  first  child  came, 
he  was  a  baby,  a  human  baby,  and  at  each  stage, 
up  to  his  early  teens,  where  he  now  is,  he  has 
been  the  child,  the  boy,  perfectly  and  typically 
the  happy,  playful  child,  the  romantic  active 

[83] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


boy — so  much  the  boy  that  as  yet  there  has 
been  little  else — he  has  the  boy  quality  taken 
to  the  nth  degree ! — a  beautiful  thing,  a  ridicu- 
lous thing,  a  baffling,  incomprehensible  thing, 
a  delightful,  innocent  thing,  with  open  joyful 
eyes,  keen  to  the  color  of  events,  unseeing  the 
unseen  harmonies  and  discords. 

To  his  brother,  however,  are  the  unseen  har- 
monies and  discords;  the  child  of  the  sensuous 
Italian  hills,  the  child  who  formed  its  unborn 
life  about  the  spiritual  woe  of  the  mother,  the 
child  of  sensuousness,  the  child  of  disturbance ! 
I  have  sometimes  felt  that  the  blow  that  struck 
her  in  the  midst  of  rich  peace  and  joy  must  have 
come  from  some  cold,  inhuman  artist  who  saw 
the  tragic  form — some  smiling  sculptor  who 
brutally  modeled  without  regard  to  human 
good  and  evil,  thinking  only  of  the  line,  of  the 
possibilities  inherent  in  the  clay  of  life. 

Whatever  the  cause — and  our  causes  are  all 
of  the  fancy;  we  know  no  other — this  second 

[84] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


child  has  been  strangely  sensitive  to  all  things 
outside  of  him.  They  have  filled  him  with  dis- 
ease and  pain,  but  he  has  seen  their  form — 
their  discord  and  their  harmony.  He  does  not 
live  in  the  romantic  world  of  the  pure  child. 
He  does  not  become  a  Sir  Lancelot  or  a  cow- 
boy. He  lives  in  his  perceptions  of  reality,  and 
his  instincts  to  construct.  He  is  always  build- 
ing, building,  indefatigably,  even  in  the  mo- 
ment of  physical  pain  and  weakness.  His 
mood  is  changed  by  the  sunlight,  by  the  damp- 
ness, and  he  sensitively  understands  the  emo- 
tional situation  of  those  near  him;  and  it  is 
on  the  basis  of  the  way  this  wonderful,  tragic 
world  affects  him  that  he  builds,  builds. 

I  am  aware  that  most  people  love  the  joy- 
ous and  the  happy;  the  robust,  the  cheerful  and 
the  pleasant,  the  adequate  and  efficient  ones, 
and  these  are  indeed  a  part  of  the  strange 
rhythm  of  life  that  holds  us  all,  but  to  me  there 
has  always  been  a  peculiar  beauty  in  those  who 

[85] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


suffer — not  those  who  merely  bear,  but  those 
on  whom  all  of  life  impinges,  on  whom  rush 
the  quality  of  all  things,  rendering  them  pain- 
fully conscious  and  sensitive  of  the  beauty  and 
the  horror;  those  who  are  affected  by  the  hid- 
den meaning  of  every  event  and  every  form 
and  whose  structure,  whose  being,  is  therefore 
always  in  imminent  danger,  the  meaning  forced 
upon  them  being  so  constantly  great  and  un- 
relenting. 

So  a  part  of  my  love  for  her — my  ever  deep- 
ening and  increasing  love  for  her — were  these 
successive  pregnancies,  these  material  signs  of 
sensibility  to  the  spirit  of  life  itself;  this,  her 
capacity  to  receive  and  to  be  affected  by  the 
germinating  seeds  of  existence,  to  have  her  be- 
ing threatened  and  developed  at  the  same  time, 
to  be  struck  and  to  expand,  and  to  give  birth  to 
little  children,  through  whom  existence  passes 
and  who  respond  constructively  to  it. 

Why  do  we  all  struggle  for  that  impossible 

[86] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


ideal  we  call  consistency*?  I  do  not  know  un- 
less it  is  because  we  are  unable  to  attain  it,  and 
our  strenuous  souls  desire  the  unattainable.  I 
loved  in  her  this  insistent  sensitiveness,  loved 
to  see  her  receive  and  use  whatever  came  to  her, 
and  I  feverishly  brought  all  I  could  to  her.  I 
passionately  sought  for  her  the  widest  experi- 
ence, used  my  restlessness  and  my  sociability  to 
bring  to  her  all  I  knew  and  loved  and  enjoyed. 
I  wanted  for  her  the  fullest  life,  and  yet  when 
she  responded  to  the  charm  and  power  of  other 
men,  my  emotions  were  not  those  of  unalloyed 
joy  and  satisfaction !  I  wanted  that  set  of  im- 
pulses, those  spurs  to  life,  to  come  through  me 
alone ! 

No,  not  wholly  so,  for  up  to  a  certain  pain- 
ful point  her  imaginative  impulses  toward  other 
men  gave  me  a  keen  though  sometimes  painful 
relish.  Up  to  the  present  stage  in  the  story 
these  impulses  of  hers  had  received  no  tangible 
expression.  I  saw  them  in  her  eyes,  in  her 

[87] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


thought  about  other  things,  in  that  frequently 


filled  me  with  a  violent  desire  to  disturb  her  or 
to  rush  off  into  the  slighter  excitements  of  sex 
and  of  boon  companionship.  And  when  I  did 
so — the  actualities  of  which  were  few  indeed  as 
compared  with  my  vagrant  impulses — she  knew 
it,  for  at  that  time  I  concealed  nothing  from  her. 
It  was  a  pleasure  for  me  to  try  to  disturb  her 
in  this  way,  too;  but  something  I  could  hardly 
bear  at  times  to  see  was  how  little  she  seemingly 
cared  for  my  infidelities.  Was  it  because  she 
cared  little  for  me  in  that  relation,  or  because 
she  knew  how  deeply  I  was  bound  to  her*?  Or 
was  it  because  she  was  still  dreaming  of  the 
Lover,  unrealized,  unknown,  that  these  my  acts 
had  little  meaning  for  her?  Perhaps  all  these 
were  elements  of  her  feeling,  and  perhaps  I  was 
wrong  in  attributing  to  her  that  indifference, 
for  at  a  later  time  I  suddenly  realized  that  these 
[88] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


acts  of  mine  had  meant  more  to  her  than  I  had 
thought.  The  simple  truth  is  that  I  never  knew 
and  never  shall  know  what  her  real  feeling  was 
or  may  be. 

At  times,  indeed,  even  then,  I  obscurely  felt 
that  her  remoteness,  her  frequent  unwillingness 
was  the  condition  of  a  greater  love  for  me  than 
I  felt  for  her;  it  enabled  her  to  see  me  more  im- 
personally and  perhaps  to  love  me  more  unself- 
ishly, to  see  me  as  apart  from  any  necessary 
instinctive  relation  to  me.  From  the  start,  a 
part  of  her  attitude  was  that  of  a  mother.  The 
very  intensity  of  my  need  for  her  gave  me  at 
times  to  her  the  appealing  charm  of  a  child. 
And  as  her  children  came  to  her,  I  became  more 
of  a  child  to  her,  and,  a  seeming  contradiction, 
more  of  a  sensual  need,  for  that  element  is  not 
absent  from  a  mother's  love,  and  one  strong 
feeling  does  not  take  from  but  adds  to  another. 

I  know  in  my  cooler  moments  of  sober 
thought  that  I  could  never  have  loved  a  woman 

[89] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


who  was  my  mistress  merely.  A  strong  perma- 
nent desire  in  me  is  and  always  has  been  to  hold 
all  things  together,  to  combine  steadily  in  the 
course  of  life  all  the  elements  of  it.  When- 
ever I  saw  in  her  an  awakening  love  of  a  child, 
a  greater  going  out  to  Nature,  a  richer  social 
unfolding,  or  a  developing  feeling  for  things 
outside  of  our  relation,  at  such  moments  there 
came  a  great  inrushing  of  love  for  her,  even  a 
greater  sensual  desire,  and  a  more  exalted  spirit- 
ual regard.  And  this  broader  love  for  her  im- 
mediately re-acted  upon  all  my  other  interests, 
— my  work,  my  feeling  about  society  and  reli- 
gion— giving  to  these  greater  warmth  and  pas- 
sion. Thus  the  ocean  swells  to  and  fro,  the 
tides  roll  in  and  out,  and  there  is  a  strange,  vi- 
brating relation  between  all  things,  each  en- 
hancing the  meaning  of  all  else.  So  that  it  is 
impossible  for  a  lover  to  have  a  mistress,  in  the 
sense  of  having  a  woman  with  whom  he  has  a 
sensual  relation  only,  for  a  lover  loves  all  things. 

[90] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


Otherwise  he  is  no  true  lover.  And  whenever 
I  saw  anew  the  human  being  in  her, — the 
mother,  the  artist,  the  life-critic — I  loved  the 
female  in  her  more  intensely  than  ever ! 

Yes,  I  loved  the  female  in  her  more  intensely 
than  ever,  but  it  is  only  the  truth  to  add  that 
I  hated  it  more  intensely  too!  As  I  re-read 
what  I  have  written,  I  am  impressed  with  my 
desire  to  tell  the  essentials,  to  lay  bare  the 
psychological  facts  of  our  relation,  without 
sentimentality,  nakedly.  But  I  am  also  again 
impressed  with  the  impossibility  of  it.  As  I 
read,  it  seems  like  fiction,  even  to  me,  who  can 
supply  much  more  than  I  can  write  down.  I 
know  I  have  not  told  enough  about  how  I  hated 
the  female  in  her. 

I  indeed  hated  her  bitterly  at  times.  I  was 
never  indifferent,  as  she  was,  but  my  hatred 
swelled  as  my  love  did;  it  took  possession  of 
me,  and  though  only  once  did  I  even  take  hold 
of  her  physically  in  anger,  and  then  slightly, 

[91]; 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


yet  a  thousand  times  have  I  broken  loose  in 
utter  desire  to  hurt  her  to  the  foundations,  to 
destroy  her  morally  and  spiritually. 

I  hated  as  I  loved  her  perfect  and  never-fail- 
ing egotism,  the  unconscious  completeness  with 
which  she  remained  herself.  I  saw  and  loved 
the  integrity  of  her  nature,  its  unyielding  sim- 
plicity, but  I  hated  it  too.  She  never  spared 
me.  She  was  as  inexorable  as  even  Nietzsche 
could  desire.  Whenever  she  was  uncomfort- 
able, the  females'  claws  were  immediately  in 
evidence.  I  could  feel  them  there,  even  when 
she  spoke  no  word.  And  when  she  did  speak 
it  was  a  relief,  although  the  words  might  be 
rasping  and  impatient.  Because  it  was  un- 
natural for  her  to  express  herself  in  sound, 
when  she  did  so,  the  sounds,  if  those  of  exas- 
perated discomfort,  were  peculiarly  irritating. 
And  yet  I  preferred  them  to  her  intolerable  si- 
lence, when  that  silence  subtly  breathed  an  en- 
tire abandonment  to  her  outraged  need  of  fe- 

[92] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


male  comfort.  L  When  at  peace  her  silence  was 
balmy  and  adorable,  but  when  her  feline  equi- 
librium was  threatened,  her  silence  was  worse 
to  me  than  all  the  torments  of  hell.  Silence 
without  positive  peace  is  a  plague  more  unbear- 
able than  any  of  the  compartments  of  Dante's 
Inferno.  S 

No,  never  in  any  real  sense  did  she  ever  spare 
me.  She  never  yielded  to  my  constant  desire 
for  what  seemed  to  her,  and  perhaps  were,  the 
minor  moralities  of  life.  They  were  forced 
upon  her  by  circumstances,  and  slowly  and  pain- 
fully she  partly  adapted  herself  to  them,  but 
never  willingly.  By  nature  she  hated  house- 
keeping, and  the  prattle  and  needs  and  noise  of 
small  children  filled  her  with  a  wild  yearning 
to  go  to  the  woods  and  to  attain  the  peace  of 
the  savage  state.  >  If  she  could  have  lived  in 
the  sea,  she  would  long  ago  have  become  a  mer- 
maiden,  reveling  in  the  salty,  undemanding, 
eea-weedy,  salad-like  charm  of  that  undiffer- 

[93] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


entiated  monster.  Just  as  she  withdrew  her- 
self at  times  from  my  social  and  amorous  de- 
mands, to  sink  into  the  bowels  of  her  earth,  so 
she  had  wildly  vicious  moments  when  the  chil- 
dren, cooks  and  neighbors — whose  social  calls 
she  never  returned,  and  for  whom  she  generally 
had  a  blighting,  cold  contempt — appeared  to 
her  as  scorpions  made  to  torment  her.  She 
disliked  them  as  she  disliked  bed-bugs  and 
mosquitoes  which  to  her  were  the  most  annoy- 
.1  ing  of  all  the  lower  animals.  And  for  her  to 
dislike  anything  meant  something  far  deeper 
than  hatred.  She  seldom  attributed  to  any- 
thing sufficient  dignity  to  hate  it.  But  dislike 
was  a  sensation  she  knew  to  the  full.  What 
irritated  her  comfort  or  her  taste  filled  her  with 
an  inexpressible  dislike. 

I  was  by  training  and  perhaps  by  nature  sus- 
ceptible to  the  minor  claims  of  what  is  called 
civilization.  I  had  a  sense  of  responsibility 
about  expenditures,  about  waste,  and  an  anx- 

[94] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


ious,  foreboding  soul  that  sometimes  saved  the 
children  from  disease  and  death,  but  irritated 
her  beyond  expression.  I  nagged  and  nagged 
her,  and  tried  to  fit  her  into  the  world  of  our 
meticulous  society,  and  she,  like  a  stubborn 
mare,  kept  the  bit  between  her  teeth  and  went 
her  own  intolerable  way. 

I  spared  her,  indeed,  as  little  as  she  spared 
me.  I  dinned  nervously  into  her  my  demands. 
I  insisted  on  economy  and  regularity,  an  affa- 
bility towards  neighbors  and  friends."'  I  kept 
my  many  engagements  with  scrupulous  care 
and  I  expected  her,  who  had  no  sense  of  time 


or  punctuality  whatever,  to  keep  hers.  And 
when  she  did  not,  I  fumed  and  fretted  and 
stormed  and  acted  like  a  petulant  child. 

For  years  and  years  I  struggled  to  overcome 
her  in  these  minor  matters  of  moralities,  rather 
than  of  morality ;  and  there  was  constant  nerv- 
ous friction  between  us.  It  is  possible  that 
the  friction  helped  to  keep  the  spark  of  love 

[95] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


alive;  perhaps  it  was  there  for  some  obscure, 
beneficent  purpose.  It  seems  to  me  at  times 
that  it  was  I  who  did  the  yielding,  gradually, 
unwillingly.  At  other  times,  when  I  see  the 
deep  harmony  now  in  her  relation  with  children 
and  with  her  outside  world,  I  feel  the  distance 
she  has  gone.  i  In  a  way,  the  years  have  brought 
about  a  change  in  both  of  us  and  in  our  mutual 
relations  and  attitudes.  \  In  some  measure  the 
nagging  soul  is  dead  in  me,  and  in  her  there 
Is  a  far  greater  adjustment  to  children,  neigh- 
bors and  engagements,  a  greater  feeling  for  what 
I  have  called  the  minor  moralities  of  society. 
And  as  I  see  the  outside  world  and  the  universe 
in  grayer  and  grayer  hues,  her  vision  is  brighter 
and  more  cheerful.  Her  love  of  life  increas- 
ingly grows  while  mine  is  on  the  wane.  So  now 
we  agree  unusually  in  what  Matthew  Arnold 
calls  the  criticism  of  life.  For  my  love  of  ex- 
istence had  a  long  way  to  ebb,  hers  a  long  war 
to  flow ! 

[96] 


Chapter 


PARE  one  another  we  never  did; 
each  struggled  to  realize  his  own 
individuality,  his  egotistic  need. 
Neither  of  us  was  considerate  to  the  other. 
Those  pale  renunciations  which  hold  many 
couples  together  in  fragile  relations  neither  of 
us  would  accept.  In  spite  of  the  manifold  con- 
nections of  a  life  of  work,  children  and  respon- 
sibility shared,  the  deeper  relation  between  us 
was  founded  not  on  compromise,  but  on  attrac- 
tion and  repulsion,  on  a  kind  of  interesting  war- 

fare.    In  the  midst  of  the  complexities  of  our 

i 

common  life,  each  of  us  has  stood  fiercely  for 

the  individual  soul  and  its  personal  needs. 
Sometimes  she  has  conquered  and  killed  me,  but 
I  have  never  really  yielded,  and  children,  work 

[97] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


and  impinging  society  have  at  times  overcome 
her  and  forced  her  warmly  from  her  well  of 
damp,  withdrawing  comfort;  but  never  with 
her  sduPs  consent;  never  merely  to  be  consid- 
erate or  thoughtful  of  others.  Our  relation  has 
been  divinely  lacking  in  sentimentality  and  in 
that  kind  of  morality  which  takes  the  salt  out 
of  life.  We  both  passionately  demanded  that 
our  union  should  add  to,  not  take  from,  abun- 
dance. So  that  whenever  we  have  found  an 
adjustment  it  has  been  a  real  one,  based  on  un- 
conscious necessity  and  not  on  the  minor  efforts 
of  the  deliberate  will. 

I  have  been  more  of  a  mother,  more  of  a 
housekeeper  than  the  great  majority  of  men. 
This  was  due  in  large  measure  to  my  indiffer- 
ence to  the  usual  ambitions  of  the  male,  to  busi- 
ness, to  conventional  art  and  literature  and  to 
the  standards  of  society;  and  to  my  practical 
lack  and  inabilities,  as  well  as  to  her  limitations 
in  domestic  and  wifely  qualities.  And  she  has 

[98] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


been  more  of  a  father  than  the  great  majority 
of  women — she  has  gone  out  to  the  larger  world 
in  her  thought,  her  imagination  and  her  work, 
and  has  helped  to  make  up  for  my  deficiencies. 
So  that  though  we  never  tried  to  compromise, 
each  has  departed  in  some  degree  from  the  con- 
ventional sphere  and  has  contributed  in  the 
other's  fields.  Or,  more  truly,  neither  of  us 
has  felt  any  limitation  of  sex,  except  the  fun- 
damental one,  and  we  have  worked  out  our 
common  life  as  if  there  were  no  conventional 
career  for  either  man  or  woman.;*  It  has  been 
difficult  and  painful,  but  it  has  seemed  to  us 
the  larger  thing  to  do,  the  more  exciting,  the 
more  amusing,  procedure. 

Amusing!  That  is  the  word  she  has  taught 
me  to  use  in  her  instinctively  Gallic  sense. 
Mentally,  emotionally  and  temperamentally  in- 
teresting is  what  she  means  by  amusing,  and  to 
insist  as  we  did  upon  our  egotistic  personalities 
as  elements  in  every  situation  was  invariably 

[99] ' 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


amusing,  no  matter  how  painful  it  might  be. 
Sometimes  the  pain  seemed  almost  to  break  the 
relation  and  separate  us  inevitably,  but  that 
which  brought  us  back  with  a  fuller  emotion 
was  the  impersonal  pleasure  of  contemplation, 

which  to  some  extent  enabled  us  to  see  ourselves 

\ 

as  if  we  were  others  and  to  be  pleased  and 
amused  by  the  spectacle.  Art  is  a  significant 
amusement,  and  as  I  have  written,  there  was 
JU  j  in  each  of  us,  an  unconscious  attempt  to  see  life 
as  art,  impersonally  though  warmly.  That  is 
why  we  both  disliked  the  sentimental  and  why 
we  passionately  rejected  the  considerate  and  the 
decent  attitude  toward  each  other,  which  was 
•  v  not  good  enough  for  our  high  instinctive  re- 
solve. 

The  deeper  disturbance  of  our  mutual  life, 
there  from  the  beginning  as  undertones,  became 
more  definite  as  time  went  on,  grew  into  clear 
motifs  in  the  symphony  of  our  relation.  The 
essential  discord  was  strengthened,  making  the 
[100] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


harmony  more  difficult  but  when  maintained 
rendering  it  deeper;  as  it  does  in  the  operas  of 
Strauss  and  Debussy. 

About  six  years  after  the  honeymoon  we 
went,  with  our  two  children,  to  the  Middle 
West  where  we  passed  an  important  year.  To 
make  clear  the  threatening  new  elements  which 
came  into  our  lives  I  need  to  refer  to  my  deep- 
ening interest  in  what  is  called  the  labor  move- 
ment of  our  day.  This  interest  had  grown  out 
of  my  work  as  a  journalist  in  New  York,  and 
had  helped  to  bring  out  my  natural  love  for 
what  is  called  the  under-dog.  It  was  a  love 
that  had  no  need  of  a  remoter  charm.  It  had 
no  relation  to  kindness  or  philanthropy.  It  had 
no  pity  or  morality  in  it.  It  was  a  simple  love 
for  the  unfamiliar,  and  for  those  instincts  and 
basic  ideas  newly  germinating  which  to  my 
imagination  seemed  to  hold  out  the  promise  of 
a  more  exciting  and  interesting  and  therefore 
a  juster  and  better  society.  I  was  deeply  tired 

[101] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


of   historical,    platitudinous    conventions    and 
. 

moralities  in  living  and  in  art,  and  whenever  I 

found  the  consciously  or  unconsciously  rebel- 
lious I  was  strangely  and  pleasurably  moved. 
It  was  for  me  an  enjoyment  second  only  in  in- 
tensity to  my  love  for  the  Woman,  and,  at  bot- 
tom, these  passions  were  connected.  An  in- 
tense temperamental  element  in  the  love  for  a 
woman  is  the  exhilaration  of  a  close  relation 
with  the  primitive,  the  instinctive,  and  the  ideal 
at  once.  He  who  has  never  desired  a  re-val- 
uation of  all  values,  who  in  his  deeper  emotions 

is  not  a  revolutionist,  has  never  fully  loved  a 
.  i 

woman,  for  in  the  closest  personal  relation  there 

lies  a  challenge  and  a  threat  to  all  that  is  mean- 
ingless or  lifeless  in  organized  society. 

I  have  never  been  able  to  learn  much  from 
books;  or  from  any  other  record  of  human  ex- 
perience. Only  when  I  come  in  contact  with 
men  and  women  do  I  seem  to  myself  to  think. 
I  then  feel  the  strange  inner  excitement  which 

[102] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


is  analogous  to  the  thrill  of  the  love  adventure. 
What  seems  a  new  conception  arouses  me  as 
does  the  kiss  of  the  beloved !  My  life  among 
the  rebellious  victims  of  the  industrial  system 
gave  me  some  vital  ideas  which  for  a  time 
played  an  unwarrantably  important  part  in  my 
life  and  have  left  a  definitely  sound  and  per- 
manent effect.  And  these  ideas  deeply  dis- 
turbed my  relation  with  Her,  and,  as  I  now 
think,  enriched  and  stimulated  our  lives  both 
together  and  as  individuals. 

I  saw  how  deep  and  all-embracing,  and 
really  how  destructive  of  our  conventions  and 
minor  moralities,  the  philosophy  of  the  prole- 
tarian really  is;  how  it  strips  society  to  the  es- 
sential !  It  destroys  the  values  we  put  on  per- 
sonal property  as  it  points  out  with  intensity 
the  enslaving  function  of  possessions.  A  con- 
ception of  a  social  order  whose  morality,  law, 
art  and  conventions  are  formed  about  the  eco- 
nomic advantage  of  a  dominant  few  startles 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


the  mind  and  the  imagination  and  turns  the 
strenuous  soul  to  an  analysis  of  the  fundamen- 
tals. It  puts  him  in  a  mood  where  respectabil- 
ity and  all  its  institutions  seem  a  higher  form 
of  injustice  and  robbery  and  makes  him  see  the 
criminal,  the  outcast  and  the  disinherited  with 
a  new  and  wondering  sympathy;  not  a  sympa- 
thy which  expresses  itself  in  benevolence  and 
effort  toward  reform,  but  a  mental  and  imag- 
inative sympathy  which  sees  in  revolution  the 
hope  of  a  more  vital  art  and  literature,  a  deeper 
justice  and  a  richer  human  existence;  a  sympa- 
thy which  is  in  its  character  aesthetic — the 
sympathy  of  the  social  artist,  not  of  the  mere 
x  reformer  or  of  the  narrow  labor  agitator. ) 

For  a  year  I  was  deeply  absorbed  in  these 
ideas  and  feelings,  new  and  disturbing  and  en- 
riching to  me.  And  I,  of  course,  brought  them 
home  to  her,  as  I  brought  everything  home  to 
her.  I  took  to  her  my  feelings  and  my  impres- 
sions, unbalanced  and  hot  from  their  source; 

[104] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


and  she  met  the  men  and  women  who  were  the 
incarnations  of  these  disturbing  conceptions. 

Ideas  of  marriage  and  the  love  relation  in 
general  were  affected  like  everything  else  by 
this  far-reaching  proletarian  philosophy.  To 
free  love  from  convention  and  from  the  eco- 
nomic incubus  seemed  a  profoundly  moral  need. 
The  fear  that  the  love  of  one's  mistress  was  the 
indirect  result  of  commercial  necessity  aroused 
a  new  variety  of  jealousy!  In  some  strenu- 
ous lovers  a  strange  passion  was  aroused — to 
break  down  all  sex  conventions  in  order  to 
purify  and  strengthen  the  essential  spiritual  , 
bond! 

I  met  men  and  women  who,  with  the  energy 
of  poets  and  idealists,  attempted  to  free  them- 
selves from  that  jealousy  which  is  founded  on 
physical  possession.  They  longed  to  have  so 
strong  a  spiritual  bond  that  it  would  be  inde- 
pendent of  any  material  event  or  any  mere 
physical  happening.  They  tried  to  rid  them- 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


selves  of  all  pain  due  to  the  physical  infideli- 
ties of  their  lovers  or  mistresses! — believing 
that  love  is  of  the  soul,  and  is  pure  and  intense 
only  when  freed  from  the  gross  superstitions 
of  the  past.  \  And  one  of  the  gross  superstitions 
seemed  to  them  the  almost  instinctive  belief 
that  a  sexual  episode  or  experience  with  any 
other  except  the  beloved  is  of  necessity  a  moral 
or  spiritual  infidelity.  They  traced  this  feel- 
ing to  old  theology  and  to  the  sense  of  owner- 
ship extended  until  it  includes  the  body  of  the 
loved  one ! 

They  highly  demanded  that  the  love  rela- 
tion should  be  free  and  independent,  that  it 
should  be  one  in  which  proud  and  individual 
equals  commune  and  communicate,  and  give  to 
each  other  rich  gifts,  but  make  no  demands  and 
accept  no  sacrifices,  and  claim  no  tangible  pos- 
session in  the  personality  of  the  other.  Only  so 
could  each  bring  to  the  other  his  best,  something 
racy  and  strange  because  his  own,  something 

[106] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


so  personal  that  it  stimulated  the  other,  though 

it  might  waylay,  disturb  and  exasperate.     Their 

;  voice  was  that  of  strenuous  and  idealistic  youth 

bearing  the  burden  of  a  general  historical  dis- 

7 

;  illusionment. 

A  burden  indeed  it  is!  To  accept  well 
marked  out  conceptions  of  morality  and  norms 
of  beauty  is  the  easier  way.  To  try  to  recon- 
struct the  basis  on  which  our  feelings  express 
themselves  is  a  task  indeed  for  the  gods.  And 
since  men  and  women  are  not  unlimited,  these 
idealists  among  them  fell  frequently  and  bit  the 
dust  of  humiliation  and  despair.  Old  tradi- 
tion and  old  instinct  proved  stronger  than  they 
and,  filled  with  commonplace  jealousy,  a  new 
pain  was  added  to  the  old — they  were  not  only 
crudely  and  madly  jealous  but  they  also  hated 
themselves  for  being  so!  Theirs  was  a  new, 
deep  pain  indeed !  They  were  no  longer  com- 
forted by  the  conviction  of  being  wronged,  of 
their  honor  outraged^  of  being  soldiers,  though 

[107] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


unhappy,  in  the  cause  of  morality.  They  suf- 
fered and  condemned  themselves  for  suffering. 
They  did  not  have  even  the  consolation  of 
thinking  themselves  justified! 

These    subtly-interrelated    ideas    connected 

with  the  whole  field  of  the  philosophy  of  total 
A  r  J 

\jjtf  reconstruction  with  which  I  came  in  personal 
\jjf~~        ""'"•  — — 

contact  through  association  with  expressive  per- 
sonalities among  the  industrial  victims  of  con- 
ventionalized society,  had  a  great  and  for  a 
time  an  unbalancing  influence  on  me,  and,  with 
my  customary  need  for  giving  all  I  had,  bad 
and  good,  I  delivered  to  her  my  new  passion- 
ate perceptions,  my  disturbing  ideals  and  my 
fragmentary  and  idealistic  hopes  of  a  superior 
race  of  men  and  women — men  and  women 
capable  of  maintaining  beautiful  and  intense 
relations  and  at  the  same  time  being  superior 
to  the  time-worn  and,  as  I  thought,  out-worn 
tests  of  virtue  and  fidelity. 
V  To  try  the  impossible  is  the  function  of  the 
V[io8] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


V 

idealist  and  of  the  fool.  \  And  I  have  certainly 
at  times  been  a  fool  if  not  an  idealist  in  my 
demands  on  myself  and  on  her.  She  took  these 
my  new  and  excited  feelings  as  she  tended  to 
take  everything  in  her  moral  environment,  to 
make  it  a  part  of  her  as  far  as  she  could  har- 
monize it  with  what  she  already  possessed,  with 
what  had  gone  before. \  And  so  she  began  to 
make  experiments  which  had  been  in  part  in- 
stigated by  me,  but  which,  after  all,  was  only 
the  following  out  of  her  deeper  nature,  a  na- 
ture more  unconventional  than  mine,  and  less 
theoretical.  She  tended  more  than  I  to  put 
into  thorough  practice  what  she  had  once  men- 
tally accepted.  The  ease  and  calmness  with 
which  she  could  take  a  mental  proposition  filled 
me  with  uneasiness.  I  felt  that  if  she  loved 
me  she  would  have  more  in  her  instincts  to  over- 
come. 

I  encouraged  her  to  have  intimate  friendships 
with  other  men;  to  be  alone  with  my  friends 

[109] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


and  with  hers;  but  when  I  saw  in  her  an  eager 
readiness  to  take  advantage  of  my  initiative, 
r  the  old  racial  feeling  of  jealousy  would  stir 
within  me.  When  I  saw  that  other  men  ex- 
cited her,  and  that  she  often  preferred  their  so- 
ciety to  mine,  deep  pain  would  take  possession 
of  me!  One  day  she  coolly  told  me  not  to 
come  home  to  luncheon  as  she  wanted  that  time 
alone  with  one  of  my  friends ! 

That  was  the  occasion  of  a  violent  quarrel 
between  us.  When  I  expressed  my  dislike  at 
being  excluded  she  accused  me  of  hopeless  in- 
consistency. 

Inconsistent  I  was,  but  not  in  the  way  she 
meant.  My  inconsistency  lay  in  demanding 
from  her  what  her  nature  could  not  give,  even 
when  I  knew  she  could  not  give  it!  Perhaps 
a  part  of  my  love  for  her  was  this  inability  of 
•  hers  to  give  herself  to  me,  but  I  always  have 
struggled  desperately  to  secure  from  her  that 

[110] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


absolute  devotion  in  passion  of  which  she  is  in- 
capable— at  least  to  me. 

It  was  not  that  she  lunched  alone  with  an-\ 
other  man  who  was  beginning  with  excitement 
to  see  her.  It  was  not  that  that  disturbed  me. 
It  was  not  so  crude  as  that,  though  she  ironically 
and  contemptuously  characterized  it  so.  I 
loved  to  have  her  like  other  men,  as  I  loved  to 
have  her  like  all  of  life.  To  taste  and  to  en- 
joy and  to  be  stimulated  to  greater  thought  and 
understanding  and  to  more  comprehensive  emo- 
tion, I  loved  to  feel  that  this  was  for  her.  It 
gave  me  a  vicarious  excitement,  a  warm  sec- 
ondary pleasure,  and  it  fed  my  illusion,  an  il- 
lusion recognized  by  me  as  an  illusion,  of  what 
she  might  one  day  be  capable  of  with  me. 

And  to  have  her  know  other  men  intimately, 
just  as  I  continually  wished  to  know  other 
women  intimately,  was  with  me  a  genuine  de- 
sire. I  saw  in  this  one  of  the  conditions  of 
greater  social  relations  between  her  and  me,  of 


a  richer  material  for  conversation  and  for  com- 
mon life  together.  Whenever  she  showed  an 
interest  in  other  men  I  saw  in  it  what  I  call  the 
live  line;  it  was  to  me  an  exciting  sign  of  imag- 
inative vitality — I  saw  the  life  spirit  in  her! 

Yes,  but  what  filled  me  at  the  same  time 
with  unutterable  passionate  misery  was  her 
tendency  at  such  moments  to  reject  me!  That 
she  wanted  to  see  other  men  alone  and  inti- 
mately squared  with  my  conscious  ideals  and 
even  with  my  emotional  impulses  and  with  my 
need  of  pleasurable  excitement.  But  that  this 
new  experience  should  make  the  distance  be- 
tween her  and  me  still  greater,  this  was  to  me 
the  unendurable.  For  her  to  tell  me  she  did 
not  want  me  to  be  with  her  and  him,  when  I 
wanted  to  be  there,  this  was  an  intolerable  ex- 
clusion, and  reopened  the  old  periodic  wounds. 

I  dwell  upon  this  seemingly  trivial  occasion 
of  the  luncheon  because  of  its  symbolic  char- 
acter. It  was  typical  of  much  that  had  hap- 

[1,2] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


pened  between  us  continually.  The  thing  in 
her  which  all  my  instincts  as  well  as  all  my 
philosophy  and  thought  rejects  is  her  inability 
to  feel  for  me  at  the  moment  she  feels  for  an- 
other! This  is  the  eternal  jar,  the  perception 
which  takes  from  the  harmony  of  life,  from  the 
unity  of  the  universe.  As  I  have  written,  all 
through  life  I  have  instinctively  and  consciously 
struggled  to  hold  all  the  essential  elements  of 
my  life  together, — not  to  drop  anything  out  of 
what  has  once  been  seen  as  beautiful.  In  this  ^  c 
painful  effort  to  maintain  our  deeper  memory,  ,  , 
what  we  call  the  soul  is  born. 

This  demand  for  an  extended  harmony  is 
what  made  the  youthful  Weininger  so  bitter  / 
towards  womankind,  in  whom  he  saw  an  essen- 
tial limitation  of  memory,  and  therefore  a  limi- 
tation of  soul.  His  personal,  unhappy  fate 
made  him  err  in  making  of  this  truth  a  merely- 
sexual  matter.  It  is  not  only  the  woman  but 
the  man,  too,  whose  intensity  and  concentra- 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


tion  is  not  sufficient  to  hold  enough  together  on 
the  basis  of  which  the  triumphant  soul  emerges. 

I  imagine  that  at  the  root  of  every  real  love 
is  this  almost  metaphysical  passion — this  deep  / 
emotional  insistency  on  unity.  So  that  when  I 
saw,  as  I  often  did  in  her,  transparent  forget- 
fulness,  a  dry  ability  to  put  herself  entirely  into 
the  interest  of  the  moment,  losing  the  harmon- 
izing fringe  of  consciousness  in  which  the  val- 
ues of  the  past  are  held,  it  almost  seemed  to  me 
as  if  her  soul  was  damned  or  had  never  been 
born,  and  my  whole  being  wept  at  the  tempo- 
rary destruction  of  my  Ideal,  at  the  confuta- 
tion of  my  philosophy,  at  the  negation  of  my 
deepest  instinct. 

But  how  often  did  I  try  to  be  as  at  such 
times  she  seemed  to  me  to  be!  In  a  kind  of 
metaphysical  despair  how  often  did  I  try  to 
rid  myself  of  underlying  memory!  to  be  a  rebel 
to  the  soul  itself,  to  live  in  the  dry,  hard  mo- 
ment, without  fringe  or  atmosphere! — trailing 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


on  with  me  none  of  the  long  reaches  of  the  past ! 
And  how  often  has  my  unconscious  demand  for 
unity  kept  me  from  realizing  my  deliberate  de- 
sire to  kill  the  soul. 

In  the  arms  of  other  women  I  have  attempted 
to  deny  the  soul.  I  have  longed  to  live  as  if  I 
had  no  essential  memory;  as  if  there  were  no 
deep  instinct  in  me  to  build  my  life  of  values 
about  a  central  principle.  When  I  failed — as 
I  always  have — I  have  sometimes  wept  bitter 
tears,  tears  falling  because  of  my  inability  to 
break  up  my  own  integrity.  I  have  been  with 
women  whom  I  liked  and  admired,  with  whom 
I  wanted  to  have  an  absolute  and  refreshing  in- 
timacy. I  have  sometimes  felt  that  my  salva- 
tion depended  on  being  able  to  give  myself  com- 
pletely to  another  woman,  and  I  have  at  times 
tried  desperately  to  do  so,  but  She  always  stood 
between,  invisible,  silent,  representing  for  me 
the  eternal  principle  of  continuity  in  emotion, 
insisting  on  the  Memory-Soul,  demanding, 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


without  intending  to,  a  monogamy  deeper  than 
that  based  on  convention  or  law. 

Demanding  this  deeper  monogamy,  not  only 
without  intending  to,  but(even  without  under- 
standing the  nature  of  monogamy  when  it  con- 
cerns the  spirit.  She  made  the  deeper  monog- 
amy necessary  for  me,  but  she  did  not  under- 
stand its  nature!  How  often  did  she  wonder 
at  the  character  of  my  love  for  her!  Her 
large,  frank,  mysterious  eyes  glowed  with  a  kind 
of  contemplative  examination.  I  was  a  curi- 
ous and  interesting  phenomenon — sometimes 
beautiful  and  attractive  to  her,  sometimes  irri- 
tating and  unpleasant — but  always  incompre- 
hensible was  the  nature  of  my  love,  perhaps  the 
nature  of  Love  itself ! 

If  she  had  at  any  one  moment  understood 

r  i*^ 

this  inevitable  bondage  of  my  spirit,  a  bondage 

which  was  independent  of  any  of  the  conven- 
tional expressions  of  fidelity,  a  bondage  bound 
up  with  my  feeling  about  myself  and  all  of  life, 
[116] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


she  would  have  understood  the  reason  for  my 
jealousy. 

I  was  jealous  because i.s^kwas(iiot  bound  in  «  « 
the  same  deep,  independent  way!  independent 
of  conventions,  bound  by  the  essential  law  of 
the  spirit.  <Jt  would  have  been  easy  for  me  to 
endure  what  is  called  infidelity  had  the  real, 
unconscious  infidelity  not  been  so  transparently 
present./  A  warm  friendship  with  another  man 
involving  sexual  relationship  would  have  met 
my  growing  social  rebelliousness,';  and  would 
have  been  eventually  recognized  by  me  as  not 
inconsistent  with  our  relation,  had  that  relation 
ever  been  securely  established. 

To  see  in  her  eyes  a  temperamental  forget- 
fulness  of  me  and  a  vague  imaginative  hope  of 
relationship  with  an  impossibly  charming  un- 
injured masculine  expression  of  God  brought 
me  back  with  an  indescribable  pang  to  my  own 
inherent  weaknesses,  my  lack  of  nervous  integ- 
rity and  to  the  impossibility  of  attaining  that 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


spiritual  unity  in  sex  which  to  me  my  relation 
to  her  had  always  idealistically  meant. 

I  wonder  if  every  lover  does  not  clearly  un- 
derstand me !  Am  I  not  here  writing  the  auto- 
biography of  every  man  as  concerns  his  love  re- 
lation1? I  think  these  memoirs  are  no  more 
true  of  me  than  of  any  one  who  has  felt  the  full 
possibility  of  a  human  relation  with  a  being  of 
the  opposite  sex. 


[us] 


Chapter 


UR  second  child,  the  child  of  her 
greatest  pain,  the  child  bound  up 
with  the  sensuous  Italian  hills,  was 
seriously  ill  at  this  period.  Almost  every  mo- 
ment since  that  time  he  has  been  struggling 
between  the  dissolution  of  his  being  and  its  re- 
generation. The  full  beauty  of  Her  would 
never  have  been  fully  revealed  had  it  not  been 
for  the  full  pain  of  this  sensitive  child!  He 
with  his  'precarious  and  tremulous  marvelous- 
ness  was  a  product  of  her  unconscious  richness. 
I  have  now  fully  known  the  hopeless  superficial- 
ity of  the  lover  who  looks  to  joy  as  the  distinc- 
tive fruit  of  his  relation;  and  of  him  who  thinks 
himself  nearer  his  childless  mistress  than  to  the 
mother  of  his  children.  Every  new  link  of  the 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


beloved  with  the  wider  life  gives  her  greater 
beauty  and  meaning,  and  the  perception  of  her 
interrelation  with  all  of  Nature  lends  to  her 
original  appeal  a  deep  structural  power  that  be- 
comes identified  with  the  total  love  of  life. 

Things  grew  constantly  more  complex  for  us. 

Practical    difficulties    and    trying   illness,    my 

i  growing  relations  with  the  rebels  whose  philoso- 

v     I 

phy  became  a  disturbing  factor  in  our  union, 
and  its  consequent  effect  on  her,  these  weavings 
and  developments  seemed  to  carry  us  to  a  point, 
an  infinity  of  moral  distance  from  the  simple 
sensuous  honeymoon ! — giving,  however,  to  that 
simple  sensuousness  a  new  exasperation  and  in- 
tensity. Especially  was  this  true  with  her. 
Her  temperamental  coolness  at  times  quite  van- 
ished in  the  midst  of  her  deep  woe  and  her  grow- 
ing excitement  of  life.  The  possibility  of  an 
unknown  lover  and  the  tragedy  of  childhood 
woke  her  now  to  an  occasional  amorous  expres- 
[120] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


sion  in  which  she  gave  herself  with  the  last, 
sad,  wonderful  giving! 

And  thus  I  reaped  the  painful  joy  as  well  as 
the  pleasurable  pain  of  the  new  stirrings  of  her 
nature  toward  others!  And  as  those  stirrings 
brought  more  strenuous  disturbance  between  us, 
so  strenuous  that  they  might  have  burst  asun- 
der the  relation,  the  new  additions,  the  children, 
the -practical  difficulties,  the  growing,  deepening 
relations  and  experiences  brought  in  a  counter- 
acting intimacy  which  prevented  the  break  be- 
tween us* 

If  our  relation  had  remained  simple  it  might 
not  have  endured.  It  could  not  have  endured 
had  it  not  developed,  changed,  and  taken  into 
it  the  richness  of  the  outside  world.  It  grew: 
to  be  so  manifold,  so  connected  with  all  else, 
that  the  disturbances  of  egotistic  strife  were 
gathered  up,  controlled  and  harmonized  by  the 
total  structure  of  our  existences — as  a  sound 

' 

which  may  be  a  harsh  discord  in  a  simple  har- 

[121] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


mony  is  a  beautiful  part  of  a  more  complex 
symphony. 

At  the  most  intense  point  of  my  absorption 
in  the  rebellious  victims  of  the  industrial  des- 
potism of  our  day  and  in  their  resulting  philosa 
phy  of  life,  she  and  the  two  children  were  away 
for  several  months,  leaving  me  excitedly  liv- 
ing with  my  new  friends.  It  was  the  first  time 
we  had  been  separated  for  more  than  a  day  or 
two,  and  in  my  feeling  we  were  not  separated 
then,  for  I  poured  out  to  her  in  letters  the  emo- 
tional meaning  of  my  life  among  the  social  reb- 
els. These  letters  were  full  of  an  exalted  ex- 
citement, of  a  vivid  hope  for  an  extended  fruit- 
ful libeVty  revivifying  and  regenerating  soci- 
ety, and  of  a  direct  appeal  and  challenge  to  her, 
demanding  a  continuance  of  the  Great  Adven- 
ture, and  exhorting  her  to  live  freely  and  to  love 
me  all  the  more ! 

With  me  this  time  of  separation  was  one  of 
mental  excitement  and  imaginative  adventure, 

[122] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


adventure  with  ideas,  and  with  men  and  women. 
There  was  no  deep  relation,  physical  or  other- 
wise, with  any  woman,  but  I  touched  and  ex- 
perimented and  wondered  and  glimpsed  the  hu- 
man and  social  vistas  that  were  opened  to  me. 
And  I  passed  on  my  impulsive  suggestions  to 
her! 

'And  then,  just  before  I  went  to  her  and  the 
children  again,  a  letter  came  telling  of  how  she 
had  met  a  man  who  moved  her  in  a  strong, 
primitive  way.  He  had  a  root-like,  sensual 
charm  for  her,  she  wrote ;  there  was  a  something 
in  him  which  needed  of  her  and  made  her  need 
of  him;  he  was  lonely  and  unsocial  and  grace- 
less, remote  and  bad,  excitingly,  refreshingly 
bad,  and  me  she  accused  of  being  good  and  that 
was  rather  stale  and  dull,  and  touched  with 
life's  too-refined  food  and  not  with  the  stimu- 
lating salt  of  the  earth.  In  him  was  the 
stimulating  salt  of  the  earth ! 

Again,  more  strongly  than  ever,  there  came 

[123] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


in  me  the  deep  reverberations  of  a  nameless 
|  jealousy !  How  weak  were  my  ideas  when  my 
\/  fundamental  feelings  were  aroused !  Nameless 
it  was,  for  we  have  as  yet  no  name  for  a  jeal- 
ousy which  doubts  and  despises  itself,  a  jeal- 
ousy mixed  with  elation  and  approval  of  its 
cause !  In  the  grip  of  the  pang  I  tried  to  jus- 
tify myself.  Oh,  why  need  she  reject  me  at 
every  new  out-going*?  Why  compare  me  un- 
favorably1? Again  came  to  me  the  old  deep 
",  wound;  she  had  never  seen  me !  never  had  liked 
my  real  self.  Again  the  intolerable  pain  of 
seeing  that  she  had  never  really  given  herself 
tome! 

She  met  me  at  the  railroad  station.     As  she 
came  quietly,  calmly  and  cordially  towards  me, 
how  wonderful,  how  strong  and  self-sufficient 
she  seemed !     A  new  life,  which  perhaps  came 
from  the  sense  of  having  a  new  lover,  breathed 
through  her,  and  lent  an  enhanced  vitality;  and 
*  to  have  the  new  without  eliminating  the  old, 
[124] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


this  was  a  fructifying  hope  in  her,  a  hope  I 
should  have  welcomed,  for  it  was  of  the  bone 
of  my  theory  and  of  my  new  ideal  for  civiliza- 
tion. I  had  the  grace  at  any  rate  to  see  her  as 
wonderful.  A  fresh  intensity  of  liking  was 


added  to  my  love,  and  for  weeks  I  devoted  my- 
self to  her  with  a  devouring  passion  that  knew 

U  J 

no  bounds. 

It  was  a  passion  full  of  disturbance  and 
moral  agony.  Her  cool  ability  to  compare  him 
with  me,  the  new  with  the  old,  as  if  we  stood 
on  an  equality  in  her  feeling,  this  drove  me  al- 
most insane ! 

By  nature  she  was  beautifully,  cruelly  frank; 
and  I  with  an  idealistic  instinct  for  self-torture 
encouraged  and  fostered  this  tendency  natural 
to  her.  It  was  an  unconscious  cruelty,  due  to 
that  seclusion  of  her  spirit  which  shut  her  from 
a  quick,  alert  knowledge  of  the  state  of  feeling 
in  the  other  person.  I  derrfanded  from  her  on 
this  occasion  an  entire,  detailed  account  of  her 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


relation  with  the  other  man,  and  she,  to  my  in- 
describable pain,  responded  with  a  lucid  exact- 
ness which  had  its  fascination,  too.  Indeed, 

§ 
'  she  never  was  more  desirable  to  me  than  when 

she  seemed,  through  some  excluding  instinct  for 
another,  infinitely  remote.  I  might  hate  her, 
but  she  appeared  then  as  a  resplendent  being. 

I  saw  from  what  she  coolly  told  me  that  she 
was  prepared  to  give  him  whatever  he  needed 
or  asked.  Just  because  of  her  aloofness  she 
was  capable  of  a  rich  though  cool  sympathy 
which  saw  him  as  beautiful  partly  because  he 
needed — a  strong  being  who  needed — who 
seemed  to  need  her.  I  felt  the  beauty  of  her 
attitude.  To  be  ready  always  to  meet  a  need 
is  beautiful.  Theoretically  and  even  emotion- 
ally I  subscribed,  but  why,  oh,  why,  had  she 
through  all  these  long  years  never  met  my  com- 
pleter  need  with  an  absoluteness  which  would 
have  calmed  and  controlled  and  rendered  for 
me  quite  harmless  her  relations  with  others'? 

[126] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


So  I  felt  the  beauty  and  the  limitation  at 
once — the  beauty  of  her  feeling  for  him,  and 
the  terrible  emotional  forgetfulness  of  me! 
How  the  temperamental  memory  dropped  out 
or  had  never  been  for  the  intenser  values  of  our 
life  together !  \  Before  my  fierce,  uncontrolled 
reproaches  she  scornfully  called  attention  to  my 
inconsistency — that  made  me  think  and  desire 
in  one  direction  and  passionately  act  in  the  op- 
posite. She  cast  up  to  me  my  physical  relations 
with  women  and  expressed  with  cool  complete- 
ness her  temporary  contempt  for  me.  He  ^^ 
seemed  so  noble  in  comparison,  for  the  lover 
in  a  much  more  simple  relation,  always  has  the 
advantage  in  apparent  nobility,  over  the  hus- 
band. 

And  I  retorted  with  what  I  think  was  not  en- 
tire hypocrisy.  Despairingly  and  passionately 
I  insisted  that  she  had  as  yet  shown  herself  in- 
capable of  giving  to  others  without  taking  from 
the  relation  with  me  that  my  soul  demanded. 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


Never,  I  repeated,  had  I  been  able  to  forget, 
even  for  a  moment,  even  in  the  arms  of  another 
woman,  my  bond  with  her;  even  when  I  de- 
sired to  forget  it,  this  spiritual  love,  stronger 
than  death,  was  unshaken;  its  strength  was  even 
more  conscious  to  me  at  such  times.  I  was  then 
more  aware  of  it,  of  its  indestructibility,  than 
ever. 

But  with  her  it  was  different,  I  insisted.  Had 
she  ever  loved  me  in  that  strange,  temperamen- 
tal way,  had  she  ever  had  that  passionate  liking 
for  my  real  self,  independent  of  my  qualities, 
she  would  have  been  incapable  of  spiritual  in- 
fidelity; no  matter  what  her  friendly  actions 
had  been,  no  matter  how  technically  and  con- 
ventionally unfaithful  she  had  been,  in  mo- 
ments of  inevitable  sexual  movements. 

Over  and  over  again  I  vehemently  asserted 
the  difference  between  the  conventions  of  her 
sex  and  of  mine,  conventions  that  I  hated  and 
wished  undone  and  obliterated  from  society; 

[128] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


but  which  nevertheless  existed  and  which  were 
-s.  a  painful  element  in  every  human  relation.  I 
pointed  out  how  difficult  it  is  for  a  woman  to 
give  herself  without  the  deeper  infidelity,  for 
she  is  told  by  society  that  unless  she  loves  when 
she  gives  herself,  she  is  evil  and  unworthy, 
abandoned;  and  that  that  terrible  and  ugly 
convention  is  a  corrosive  reality  even  to  strong- 
minded,  humorous  and  emancipated  women.  I 
had  hoped  she,  the  woman  I  loved,  could  rise 
above  this  crassly  physical  measure  of  virtue, 
but  whenever  it  came  to  the  test  I  had  seen  that 
when  she  began  to  be  intimate,  or  to  think  of  in- 
timacy  with  another  man,  she  tended  to  forget 
her  spiritual  bond  with  me.  Was  it  because 
of  this  damnable  social  convention,  or  because 
she  had  never  felt  that  bond?  Between  these 
alternatives  I  passionately  vacillated,  self-tor- 
turing, helpless,  morally  unattractive,  undig- 
nified, the  ugly  incarnation  of  an  extreme  un- 
satisfied need ! 

[129] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


One  day  she  asked  me,  as  she  had  asked  me 
before,  not  to  come  home  that  evening  until 
late.  She  wanted  to  spend  it  alone  with  him. 
She  wanted  a  relation  in  which  I  could  be  no 
part,  which  could  not  be  if  I  were  there,  some- 
thing excluding  me!  Dumb  rage  took  pos- 
session of  me,  but  at  the  same  time  I  longed 
to  take  the  strong  and  independent  attitude,  the 
attitude  that  might  win  myself  for  myself,  that 
might  win  the  greater  Her  for  me — the  Her 
for  me  that  I  had  never  had ! 

So  I  went  away  and  dined  and  spent  the  eve- 
ning in  a  gathering  of  men  and  women  who 
lightly  talked  of  love  and  freedom  and  soci- 
ety. As  I  looked  on  these  faces  and  heard  not 
what  they  said,  I  wondered  if  they  felt  as  I 
felt,  if  their  lives  were  as  mine,  and  I  knew  in- 
stinctively that  they  were;  I  knew  that  all  lov- 
ers understand  and  that  this  book  is  a  univer- 
sal book,  that  all  human  beings  who  feel  at  all 
must  feel  as  I  feel.  In  my  mind  and  senses,  in 

[130] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


my  conscious  self  and  in  the  clearness  of  my 
definite  thoughts,  I  was  with  her  and  him — not 
with  these  my  talking  brothers  and  sisters  whose 
faces  only  I  saw,  for  their  faces,  not  their  words, 
mirrored  my  soul.  Did  her  being  remember 
me?  Doubt  of  her  and  doubt  of  myself  came 
with  alternating  violence  and  when  I  went  home 
I  was  completely  exhausted. 

I  found  her  proud  and  silent,  instinct  with 
that  torturing  and  amazing  recessional  remote- 
\  ness  which  was  of  her  inner  being,  of  the  inner 
being  of  all  things.  She  looked  at  me  with 
quiet,  searching  questionings,  as  if  she  were 
looking  deep  into  my  nature  and  wondering 
if  there  were  any  consistency  there,  anything 
that  remained  and  endured,  anything  that  was 
necessary,  after  all  that  was  conventional  and 
accidental  and  vain  and  merely  respectable  had 
passed.  She  was  deeply  serious  and  it  was  with 
a  certain  quiet  anxiety  that  she  met  me. 

But  her  quiet  passed  into  silent  reproach  as 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


I  nervously  demanded  talk  from  her.  She 
withdrew  into  that  infinity  of  distance  that  I 
knew  and  hated,  and  refused  to  answer  my  vio- 
lent demand  to  tell  me  all  that  had  happened 
between  her  and  him.  The  strong  part  for  me 
to  have  taken  was  dignified  trust,  an  obvious 
confidence  that  the  best  existed  between  us  and 
was  inalienable.  But  I  did  not  have  that  trust. 
That  confidence  was  lacking  in  me  and  I  was 

not  strong  and  clever  enough  to  assume  it. 

.<  .'<. 

So  she  with  clear  disappointment  was  ob- 
stinately silent,  and  this  in  spite  of  my  grow- 
ing excitement  and  violence.  And  suddenly 
something  happened  which  had  never  happened 
before  and  never  since,  although  in  after  years 
even  more  acute  crises  arose;  without  premedi- 
tation I  took  her  by  the  throat!  I  did  not 
know  I  was  doing  it  until  I  caught  myself  in 
the  act.  Never  had  the  possibility  of  using 
physical  violence  occurred  to  me.  In  my  con- 
sciousness it  was  incredible — but  here  it  hap- 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


pened  without  consciousness !  The  underlying 
brute  in  me  terrified  me,  even  in  the  act  itself! 
At  that  moment  I  understood  murder,  and  knew 
that  assassination  might  become  inevitable  for 
any  one  at  any  moment. 

Terror  at  myself  was  followed  by  surprise 
at  the  way  she  took  it.  She  made  no  resist- 
ance, but  in  a  deep  quiet  whisper  she  breathed 
my  name.  Her  eyes  grew  big  and  a  profound 
wonder  was  in  that  silent  sound  that  seemed  to 
come  from  all  of  her.  I  think  the  perception 
that  I  was  capable  of  absolute  unreason  ap- 
pealed in  some  primitive  way  to  her  imagina- 
tion. Me  she  had  always  regarded  as  a  finally 
civilized  creature,  analytical,  seeking  reason  and 
sophistication.  The  passion  which  was  me  she 
had  perhaps  never  so  clearly  felt.  At  any  rate 
I  sensed  with  a  kind  of  shameful  pride  that  she 
was  gazing  at  me  as  at  an  interesting  stranger. 
Not  the  slightest  touch  of  fear  was  in  her  look, 

[133] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


but  a  wonderful  quiet  excitement  dominated 
her. 

Why  was  it  that,  in  after  years,  when  the 
waves  of  passion  came  on  me  perhaps  even  more 
strongly,  I  never  again  resorted  to  physical  vio- 
lence*? It  may  be  the  shock  to  myself  when  I 
felt  what  I  was  capable  of;  perhaps  it  was  the 
contempt  that  must  be  ours  when  we  use  the 
uttermost  weapon  without  reserve.  To  lose  all 
possible  control  is  the  final  degradation  of  the 
soul.  And  she,  too,  never  again  used  her  final 
weapon — impenetrable  silence  to  the  same  ter- 
rible degree.  Her  silence  was  with  her  as  un- 
reasonable, as  much  a  part  of  primitive  instinct, 
as  was  my  violence.  And  she  had  on  that  oc- 
casion indulged  her  form  of  unreasonable  vio- 
lence to  the  limit.  And  my  violence  had  been 
born  of  hers.  I  think  at  that  moment  a  new 
fear  of  ourselves  was  born  in  each,  and  that 


although  we  did  not  then  know  it  we  were 


nearer  together  than  ever  before. 


A<x^ 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


At  that  moment  we  felt  the  degree  of  sav- 
ageness  which  each  could  show  the  other;  and 
the  first  symbolic  response  was  a  wild,  fierce 
embrace,  mordant,  painful,  without  limit,  sad 
with  passion,  born  of  the  new  element  of  rec- 
ognized mutual  strangeness  that  had  been  ex- 
citingly revealed  to  us.  *  And  in  the  languid, 
unnervous  reconciliation  that  followed,  the 
wonderful  complete  peace,  she  quietly  and  fully 
told  me  what  I  had  so  fiercely  needed  to  know ; 
and  I  remember  how  ashamed  I  was  of  my  re- 
lief swhen  I  knew  that  she  had  been  unable  to 
give  herself  to  him,  and  at  the  same  time  of  a 
certain  vague  disappointment  ^perhaps  because 
she  was  still  finally  untested  and  doubt  of  the 
inalienable  bond  continued  its  periodic  pos- 
session. 


Chapter  IX 

HEN  there  came  three  years  abroad. 
Economic  necessity  was  removed  to 
a  point  where  we  felt  we  could  de- 
vote ourselves  for  a  time  to  contemplative  work 
— I  to  those  psychological  studies  of  tempera- 
ment which  were  so  fascinating  to  me,  she  to 
;  the  forming  of  her  experience  into  stories  of  hu- 
ipnan  life.  Dwelling  as  we  both  did  in  our  writ- 
ing on  intimate  nervous  relations  undoubtedly 
helped  to  make  us  more  fully  conscious  of  our 
own  relation:  and  what  added  still  farther  to 
this  awareness  of  our  bond  was  my  almost  con- 
stant presence  in  the  family.  This  had  and  has 
always  been  so  with  me,  with  some  brief  in- 
terruptions. Men  who  go  regularly  to  their 
office  and  are  only  with  their  wives  and  chil- 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


dren  in  the  evenings  and  on  holidays  do  not 
fully  taste  the  domestic  reality  nor  is  made  the 
full  test  of  the  personal  relation.  My  being 
with  her  and  the  children  was  irregular  but  fre- 
quent and  extended.  All  day  and  all  night  for 
weeks  and  weeks  and  months  and  months,  then 
in  the  house  all  day  and  away  most  of  the  night; 
writing,  she  and  I  at  the  same  time,  I  taking  my 
share  in  care  of  the  children,  in  teaching  them, 

!  and  in  the  thousand  details  of  the  domestic  sit- 

X "»(  I 

uation.     It  was  a  close  partnership,   full  of 

•     variation  from  the  usual,  interesting,  irritating, 
2    and  replete  with  meaning  and  color. 

It  was  soon  after  the  crisis  that  we  sailed; 
we  were  both  very  tired  emotionally,  but  I  think 
she  felt  as  I  did  the  charm  of  going  off  into  the 
unknown  together.  We  had  left  nothing  be- 
hind us,  not  even  furniture,  and  we  were  tak- 
ing with  us  all  we  possessed,  contained  in  three 
trunks,  with  no  idea  of  the  future  except  the 
decision  not  to  live  in  hotels  and  pensions,  but 

[137] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


to  keep  house  wherever  we  went.  This  we  al- 
ways did,  no  matter  how  short  our  stay  in  a 
place;  we  insisted  on  tasting  the  life  as  lived 

around  us,  and  my  domestic  partnership  with 

i 

her  helped  us  to  get  settled  as  well  as  unset- 

i 

tied  very  quickly.  That  we  could  bear  noth- 
ing except  keeping  house  had  an  inevitable 
meaning,  no  matter  how  exasperating  those 
cares  were  at  times  to  both  of  us.  We  were 
forced  to  live  together  in  the  external  condi- 
tions of  existence,  as  in  the  spiritual  bond:  it 
was  strong,  very  strong,  whatever  it  was. 

On  the  steamer  we  were,  I  remember,  un- 
usually quiet.  But  I  felt  in  her  a  new  freer 
interest  in  other  things.  She,  apparently, 
thought  very  little  of  the  lover  she  had  left,  but 
because  of  him  she  saw  the  casual  stranger  in 
a  warmer,  more  human  light.  Her  feeling  of 
companionship  with  me  seemed  stronger  be- 
cause of  the  recent  experience;  the  element  of 
additional  strangeness  added  to  the  color  of  our 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


common  life,  although  I  often  relapsed  into  un- 
reasoning pathos  and  pain.  We  were  on  the 
whole,  however,  calmly  waiting  for  the  future. 
We  were  on  a  broader  base  than  ever,  and,  rest- 
ing on  our  temperamental  oars,  there  was  some- 
thing that  whispered  to  us  of  exciting,  adven- 
turous things  to  come,  for  which  we  were  in- 
stinctively saving  our  strength.  I  saw  but  not 
alw.ays  with  pain  the  fuller  appreciation  in  her 
glance  at  other  men  as  they  swung  freely  and 
picturesquely  along  the  deck.  And  on  my  part 
was  unconsciously  forming  itself  the  resolution 
to  attain  emotional  freedom  from  her  by  deeper 
intimacy  with  other  women.  Whenever  I  felt 
the  full  pain  of  my  dependency  on  her,  as  I 
did  whenever  I  fully  realized  her  indestructible 
aloofness  from  me,  I  had  an  access  of  hope  of 
attaining  aloofness  for  myself  through  rela- 
tions with  other  women — a  hope,  however,  that 
has  never  been  realized. 

Never,  however,  even  for  a  moment,  have  I 

[139] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


ever  felt  any  diminution  of  love  for  her.  In- 
deed, as  time  went  on  and  our  relations  grew 
more  complex,  more  serious,  and  at  times  more 
painful,  that  love  has  seemed  more  profound, 
more  all-embracing,  and  to  be  in  a  way  a  sym- 
bol of  my  love  for  beauty,  for  Nature,  for  Life 
itself. 

And  now,  again  in  Italy,  came  another  period 
of  wonderful  pleasure  in  her.  In  the  beautiful 
intensity  of  an  Italian  spring  and  summer  we 
realized  ourselves  to  the  joyous  full,  and  for  a 
time  with  no  element  of  interwoven  pain.  The 
pleasures  of  the  senses  and  of  the  mind,  with 
civilized  companions  gracefully  and  indolently 
living  out  their  unstrenuous  lives,  dining  with 
them  out-of-doors  in  the  long  wonderful  eve- 
nings, and  combining  the  serious  languor  of  pas- 
sionate Italy  with  the  nervous  charm  of  an  epi- 
grammatic Gallic  civilization — these  pleasures 
were  of  a  broader,  and  more  intellectualized  but 
not  less  sensuous  honeymoon,  rendered  all  the 

[140] 


more  poignant  by  the  recent  crisis,  hinting  al- 
ways of  the  possibility  of  volcanic  happenings. 

Now  again  began  to  stir  within  her  the 
strange  unconscious  life,  and  she  was  pregnant 
for  the  third  time.  At  the  period  of  concep- 
tion we  were  reveling  in  a  beautiful,  full  trans- 
lation into  French  of  the  Arabian  Nights.  De- 
voted to  the  sensuous  unmoral  charm  of  these 
gorgeous,  colorful  tales  we  lived  a  life  quite  out 
of  harmony  with  Puritanical  ideas.  .The  sen- 
timental and  the  narrowly  ethical  were  far 
away  and  this  child  was  started  and  was  born 
in  an  atmosphere  of  mature  sensuousness,  in  a 
complete  acceptance  of  what  is  called  the  Pagan 
point  of  view.  The  tremulous,  early  lyricism 
of  young  love  had  given  place  to  a  rich  decided 
determination  to  take  in  full  measure  the  goods 
the  Gods  provide ! 

She  was  born — this  sensitive  little  girl — on 
the  Arno,  on  the  banks  of  the  stream  that  runs 
through  Fiorenze,  the  Flowering  City  of  Tus- 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


cany!  And  her  mother  this  time  felt  the  ex- 
hilaration of  child-birth,  "the  athletic  triumph 
in  the  midst  of  pain,  the  accomplishment  of  the 
impossible  with  its  resultant  triumph.  And 
soon  afterwards  came  that  full  physical  beauty, 
that  springing  of  the  blood  and  of  the  body, 
that  intense  enhancement  of  color  and  swelling 
of  contour  which  gave  her  the  look  of  a  gorgeous 
Magdalene;  more  delicate  in  quality  than  Ru- 
bens or  Titian,  but  suggesting  both,  richer  and 
more  voluptuous  than  the  early  Florentine 
painters,  yet  having  the  recessional  purity  of 
the  Giottesque  or  Siennese  madonna!  No  vir- 
gin could  equal  her  full  beauty.  No  lover 
could  so  richly  love  a  maiden  were  it  not  for  the 
unconscious  purpose  of  this  ultimate  fruition! 

My  feeling  for  her  at  that  time  did  not  have, 
perhaps,  as  much  of  what  is  called  sentiment  as 
it  had  before,  and  was  destined  to  have  again; 
and  I  imagine  it  was  the  same  with  her.  I 
liked  her  with  an  intense  and  destructive  liking 

[142] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


because  she  was  life  itself,  and  she  had  an  im- 
personal relish  in  existence  which  included  me, 
the  children,  the  hills,  the  works  of  art,  the 
Italian  cooking  and  the  witticisms  of  our  aes- 
thetic and  self-indulgent  friends !  Never  be- 
fore had  she  enjoyed  life,  never  had  she  trusted 
and  believed  in  it,  so  much,  never  had  she  been 
so  willing  to  embrace  it ! 

Yes,  she  was  willing  to  embrace  it!  Or, 
rather,  have  life  embrace  her.  I  saw  that  in  her 
every  attitude.  Her  feeling  about  literature 
and  art,  about  Nature;  the  love  of  beauty,  al- 
ways strong  and  pure  in  her,  was  greatly  in- 
tensified. And  there  was  a  subtle  sensuousness 
in  her  friendly  relations  with  the  contemplative 
men  on  the  hills ;  a  cool  freedom  from  any  rec- 
ognized bond.  In  her  imagination  she  was  as 
free  as  air:  I  could  see  this  in  everything;  in  a 
glance,  in  a  sensuous  movement  towards  a  sun- 
set, the  kind  of  love  she  showed  for  a  child,  as 
well  as  her  quiet  appreciation  of  the  personali- 

Ens] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


ties  about  her.  That  innate  distrust  of  life 
which  had  always  been  hers,  was  in  large  meas- 
ure displaced  by  the  fully  accepted  sensuous- 
ness  of  her  experience ;  art,  children,  the  willing- 
ness to  have  lovers,  the  sense  of  freedom.  The 
sense  of  freedom!  How  vitalizing,  how  re- 
freshing, how  indispensable  to  the  living  of 
every  full  life ! 

And  this  was  in  part  the  result  of  the  sex 
crises  we  had  had  together  and  these  were  in 
part  due  to  my  interest  in  the  philosophy  of  the 
proletariat!  What  a  strange  swing  it  is  from 
the  impersonal  to  the  personal  and  the  other 
way  round!  How  I  had  fiercely  desired  this 
and  how  I  feared  it ! 

And  that  I  feared  it  with  reason  was  shown 
by  the  development  of  her  feeling  for  me.  Her 
love  for  me  seemed  to  increase  in  impersonal 
warmth;  she  loved  me  more  as  she  loved  other 
things  more,  as  she  loved  life  more,  and  other 
people  more;  but  at  the  same  time  there  was 

[144] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


even  less  dependency  on  me,  a  greater  imper- 
sonality in  her  feeling  for  me !  Partly  through 
other  men  and  partly  through  my  ideas  she  had 
achieved  an  even  more  complete  independence 
of  me !  This  was  beautiful :  this  is  beautiful 
to  me  now,  and  the  very  beauty  of  it  stimulated 
my  emulation.  I  wanted  to  be  as  she  was:  I 
want  to  be  as  she  is ! 

Let  me  not  be  hypocritical  enough  to  say  that 
that  was  the  only  reason  which  now  began  to 
lead  to  more  intimate  relations  between  me  and 
other  women  than  ever  before.  But  it  was  one 
of  the  reasons.  I  was  ever  struggling  to  be  free 
of  her  in  order  more  fully  to  enjoy  her  without 
that  intolerable  pain.  And  certainly  my  deep 
and  luxurious  intimacy  with  her  had  enabled 
me  to  understand  other  women  better  and  to 
approach  them  with  greater  sympathy — just  as 
her  experience  with  me  had  rendered  her  a  more 
attractive  object  to  other  men,  more  subtly  sen- 
sitive and  understanding,  more  sensuous,  with 

[145] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


more  of  that  amorous  pity  which  a  finely  bal- 
anced woman  feels  so  thoroughly  that  she 
hardly  recognizes  its  specific  character  and  is 
not  inclined  to  think  herself  in  love. 

And  a  developed  sensuousness  in  all  things 
leading  to  a  general  Paganism  gives  to  friend- 
ship between  a  man  and  a  woman  an  almost  in- 
evitable occasional  sexuality.  It  is  the  condi- 
tion of  a  fuller  taste  of  personality.  So  at  any 
rate  I  have  always  felt  it  to  be,  and  so  as  I  en- 
joyed her  more  and  more  fully,  more  and  more 
did  my  friendship  with  other  women  tend 
towards  the  possibility,  but  not  the  realization, 
of  the  more  intimate  embrace!  Never  have  I 
been  able,  as  I  have  written,  to  achieve  emo- 
tional independence  of  her,  but  my  social  in- 
timacy with  other  women  grew  more  and  more 
intense  and  my  relations  with  them  were  lim- 
ited not  by  my  conscious  will,  but  by  that  mys- 
terious bond  which  held  my  spirit  and  made  it 
impossible  for  me  to  give  my  real  self  to  an- 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


other.X  It  affected  even  my  physical  make-up 
which  in  amorous  play  will  not  respond  to  the 
conscious  will  but  only  to  the  unconscious  in- 
stinct. And  she  held  that  unconscious  part  of  me 
on  which  even  the  instinctive  movements  of  my 
flesh  were  dependent — that  part  of  me  she  held 
in  bond!  How  mysterious  is  that  inevitable 
monogamy,  and  how  it  shows  that  the  real  thing 
in  us  all  is  something  spiritual!  And  how  it 
points  to  the  impertinence  of  law  and  conven- 
tional morality  which  insists  on  a  condition  al- 
»  ready  inevitable  if  of  the  spirit — and  if  it  is  not 
of  the  spirit  it  is  nothing. 

On  the  top  of  one  of  the  most  beautiful  hills 
of  Italy  we  lived  and  played,  mentally  and  tem- 
peramentally. A  few  hours  of  writing  in  the 
morning  when  we  tried  with  sincerity  to  express 
our  innermost  feelings  about  existence,  I  in 
psychological  documents  and  she  in  fiction,  and 
then  the  long,  late,  cool  summer  afternoons 
when  the  sun  changed  from  the  white  scorch- 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


ing  blaze  of  noon  to  the  luminous  ball  throw- 
ing long,  cool  shadows  made  of  color  and  form 
over  the  earth,  followed  by  the  fresh,  warm 
night  broken  pleasantly  in  the  early  dawn  by 
the  noisy  nightingale  or  the  shrill,  clear  clarion 
of  the  cock;  removed  from  the  urgent  call  of 
economic  need,  with  much  unnecessary  energy, 
and  in  such  an  environment,  why  not  play? 
How  prevent,  or  why,  the  inevitable  movements 
of  the  human  temperament,  leading  to  the  song 
and  dance  of  sex1?  It  was  this  song  and  dance 
that  sounded  and  vibrated  rhythmically  all 
about,  among  these  sensuous,  disillusioned,  self- 
indulgent  ones,  and  among  the  spontaneous 
peasantry  on  the  olive-laden  slopes. 

I  think  it  was  her  aesthetic  sense,  that  inev- 
itable response  in  her  to  form,  that  determined 
for  her  the  character  of  her  social  pleasures. 
•  There  were  two  men  with  whom  she  played  in 
v     exquisite,  amusing  ways  that  had  its  own  subtle 
intensity,  too.     There  was  a  passionate,  blue 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


flame  of  a  man  who  loved  beauty  as  Shelley's 
night  loved  the  morrow,  the  devotion  to  some- 
thing afar  from  the  sphere  of  our  sorrow.  She 
caught  and  gracefully  responded  to  the  aerial 
nature  of  his  feeling,  humorously  conscious  of 
his  fear  of  the  full  emotional  or  physical  ca- 
ress. And  the  other  was  a  relaxed  sensualist 
of  delicate  and  civilized  character  whose 
French  epigrams  were  the  only  enticing  things 
about  him.  Neither  of  these  gentlemen  was 
in  deep  need  of  anything  except  the  flitting 
pleasures  of  evanescent  thought  and  poetical 
expression,  and  she  played  with  them  with  a 
smiling  and  rather  slighting  sympathy.  But 
the  charm  was  at  times  great  enough  to  hold 
her  in  amusing  converse  below  while  the  nurs- 
ing baby  above  howled  in  impotent  rage  because 
of  food  delayed.  Her  need  for  the  amusement 
of  the  mind  was  strong  and  constant,  but  I 
sometimes  had  sympathy  for  the  child. 

And  I  went  off  through  the  wonderful  nights 

[H9] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


to  the  cafes  in  Florence  to  talk  to  the  artists  and 
the  women,  to  taste  the  Chianti  and  the  Maz- 
arin,  and  to  indulge  in  that  satisfying  mixture 
>  of  work  and  play — where  work  is  play  and  play 
is  work,  that  would  be  the  solution  of  the  labor 
problem,  and  is  the  highest  form  of  an  enjoy- 
ment that  has  no  sad  reaction.  But  this  pas- 
sion which  has  followed  me  always  through- 
out life,\to  work  on  my  pleasures  and  to  be 
pleased  in  my  work,  periodically  ends  in  an  un- 
premeditated, intenser  situation  which  destroys 
both  work  and  play. 

And  in  this  lovely  place  I  met  a  lady  with 
whom  I  played  and  who  played  with  me.  A 
certain  note  of  frivolity,  of  the  sad  Watteau 
type,  however,  insists  on  conveying  itself  to 
these  pages  dealing  with  this  period  abroad. 

The  profounder  thing  in  passion  is  the  product 

/f 
of  a  keen  and  simple  provincialism;  where  the 

spiritual  lines  are  long  and  intense  and  mo- 
notonous.    In  an  old,  civilized  place,  however, 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


full  of  detailed  beauty,  passion  is  broken  up 
into  picturesque  and  amusing  half  emotions  and 
incipient,  laughing  ideas  which  relieve  the  emo- 
tional strain.  So  I  find  in  writing  of  our  Eu- 
ropean experience  among  the  completer  prod- 
ucts of  human  personality  and  art  that  there  is 
an  inevitable  note  of  frivolity,  even  though  it 
has  a  touch  of  the  sad  and  the  pathetic ;  it  lacks 
passion  and  intensity. 

We  played  together,  this  lady  and  I,  but  we 
were  not  on  an  equality,  for  I  was  living  with 
my  wife — how  strange  and  inadequate  it  seems 
to  refer  to  her  as  my  wife ! — and  to  this  absorb- 
ing relation  were  added  my  work  and  the  chil- 
dren, and  she,  the  lady  with  whom  I  played, 
was  living  alone.  In  every  way,  except  in  the 
deeper  need  of  the  soul,  I  was  satisfied,  and 
she  was  not  in  any  way,  and  that  formed  an 
unfair  situation  which  always  leads  to  pain  and 
regret.  Following  the  conventional  episode  of 
sex  which  of  course  ensued,  there  came  an  in- 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


evitable,  emotional  demand  from  her  which  I 
could  not  satisfy,  try  as  I  might ;  for  that  called 
on  instinctive  depths  which  I  could  not  control 
and  I  had  the  humiliation  of  disappointing  her, 
of  leaving  her  unsatisfied  and  resentful,  and 
with  reason.  To  arouse  and  not  satisfy  a  need 
is  the  deepest  sin  of  all,  and  that  any  one  who 
has  experienced  knows  and  bitterly  regrets. 
What  I  condemn  even  more  strongly  in  myself 
is  that  more  than  once,  with  others,  I  sinned  in 
like  manner,  not  having  learned  my  lesson,  or, 
having  learned  it,  not  having  enough  self-con- 
trol and  genuine  kindness  to  take  advantage 
of  it. 

I  have  no  intention  of  going  through  the  list 
of  my  experiences  with  other  women,  of  those 
warm  friendships  and  impossible  hopes  of  emo- 
tional freedom  and  of  periodic  belief  that  never 
in  her  could  I  find  the  reciprocal  passion  which 
my  soul  needed;  with  therefore  serious  move- 
ments towards  others.  I  touch  and  shall  touch 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


only  upon  such  aspects  of  these  experiences  as 
help  to  explain  my  love  life,  such  experiences  as 
seem  to  me  typical  of  the  love  life  of  all  of  us. 
And  I  bring  up  especially  the  memory  of  the 
lady  with  whom  I  played  at  that  time,  and 
with  whom  pain  was  the  result,  because  of  the 
surprising  effect  that  this  affair  had  on  Her,  on 
the  woman  with  whom  I  had  been  playing  for 
nine  years,  the  complex,  perturbed  and  difficult 
game  of  life. 

I  had  never  felt  it  necessary  to  hide  anything 
from  her;  I  wanted  my  relations  to  her  to  be 
of  that  inner  truth  which  was  independent  of 
all  external  manifestations  and  of  all  conven- 
tions, and  her  apparent  coolness  towards  me 
and  the  quality  of  impersonality  in  her  feeling 
gave  me  a  greater  fancied  freedom  both  of  act 
and  of  openness  with  her.  But  when  she  found 
that  I  had  had  this  affair,  she  staggered  slightly, 
as  from  a  physical  blow.  I  imagine  that  a  part 
of  my  instinct  in  telling  her  was  that  desire  to 

['53] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


disturb  her,  to  make  her  feel,  which  is  a  con- 
stant part  of  my  relation  to  her.  I  have  told 
how  I  threw  cones  at  her;  but  this  one  was  of 
unexpected  seriousness.  I  felt  that  something 
had  happened  that  had  never  happened  before, 
something  that  was  destined  to  have  porten- 
tous consequences;  and  it  created  in  me  a  keen 
sense  of  my  brutality  and  at  the  same  time  a 
kind  of  fear,  something  akin  to  panic,  unfa- 
miliar and  disturbing.  Never  again,  I  felt, 
could  I  be  so  open  with  her;  for  the  first  time 
I  saw  that  at  some  points  she,  like  me,  must  be 
spared.  Not  that  my  perception  had  any  great 
influence  at  that  time  on  my  actions,  but  it  did 
have  upon  my  attitude. 

And  her  gayety  was  gone.  The  sensuous 
lightness  and  aloof  freedom  of  her  life  abroad 
had  flown.  We  were  perhaps  as  close  as  ever, 
but  it  was  a  sad  closeness,  with  little  of  the 
lighter  play  in  it.  It  was  a  time  of  depression 
with  her,  and  also  a  time  of  unconscious  prep- 

[154] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


aration  for  the  most  serious  episode  in  her  life 
and  in  mine — an  episode  that  seemed  to  threaten 
at  one  time  to  put  a  final  term  to  our  relation. 
She  was  not  aware,  I  think,  of  her  deep  readi- 
ness to  give  to  another  what  I  periodically  felt 
she  had  never  given  to  me ;  but  it  was  deep  in- 
deed in  her,  this  unconscious,  perhaps  partly 
conscious  readiness  to  lose  her  aloofness,  to  give 
herself  completely  away,  and  the  inevitable  fol- 
lowed, for  that  towards  which  one's  whole  na- 
ture strains,  is,  in  some  measure,  bound  to  come. 


Chapter  X 


GAIN  I  am  aware  of  the  selected 
character  of  all  writing.  No  liter- 
ary attempt,  no  matter  how  success- 
ful, can  do  other  than  trace  a  thread  which  runs 
in  and  out  of  a  vast  complex  of  experience  re- 
maining unrecorded.  My  sincerity  can  do  no 
more  than  catch  a  small  though  important  as- 
pect of  the  relations  between  a  man  and  a 
woman,  and  in  order  to  make  vivid  that  aspect 
all  else  must  fade  into  a  gray  obscurity  or  into 
a  nothingness  which  is  far  from  corresponding 
to  the  reality.  That  is  why  the  most  sincere 
writing  automatically  takes  on  the  quality  of 
fiction. 

With  every  deepening  addition  to  our  rela- 
tion there  has  come  to  me  an  ever  intenser  ap- 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


preciation  of  her  spiritual  and  physical  beauty. 
This  is  true  even  at  the  moment  of  great  pain, 
of  disappointment  and  of  anger,  showing,  per- 
haps, that  my  bond  to  her  is  esthetic  first  and 
last,  a  bond  of  pleasure  complete  though  often 
unendurable  to  the  point  of  anguish;  yet  there 
was  always  in  it  a  life-giving  something.  She 
certainly  came  to  me  that  existence  might  be 
more  abundant.  In  an  indescribable,  warm 
way  she  has  always  been  for  me  the  Woman, 
with  all  the  complex  marvelousness  that  that 
means  to  the  Man. 

And  in  the  year  that  followed,  beginning 
with  the  shock  to  her  from  the  projectile  of  my 
amorous  play,  her  increasingly  alienating  depth, 
her  steady  recession  from  me,  came  to  me  not 
as  something  wrong  or  ugly.  There  was  a 
something  wonderful  in  it  on  which  I  cannot  lay 
my  analyzing  touch. 

And  he,  the  man,  who  came  at  what  is  called 
the  psychological  moment,  he,  too,  now  appears 

[157] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


to  me  as  even  then  he  seemed,  a  being  of  excep- 
tional beauty.  He  was  an  old  friend  of  mine 
from  college  days,  always  bitter  with  nervous 
unbalance  and  impatient  of  the  world's  futili- 
ties, not  strong  enough  to  help  to  set  them  right, 
but  keen  to  all  hypocrisy  and  false  sentiment, 
full  of  ambition  to  achieve  which  left  him  no 
peace  and  which  prevented  any  quiet  accom- 
plishment. I  had  loved  him  for  his  sensibil- 
ity and  his  one-time  nervous  need  of  me,  and 
now  after  long  years  of  separation  he  came  to 
us,  abroad,  nervously  needing  rest,  broken  down 
from  inner  strain  and  outer  fruitless  work. 

And  he  loved  Her,  my  Her,  of  course !  And 
I  loved  him  all  the  more!  Perhaps  he  liked 
her — that  may  be  a  fitter  word  to  call  it;  but 
his  liking  was  that  intense  recognition  of  her 
quality  which  at  the  highest  point  is  greater 
than  love;  he  liked  her  much  as  I  liked  her. 
She  pleased  our  taste  so  utterly !  And  I  loved 
to  have  him  so  perfectly  appreciate  her.  She 

[158] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


is  deeper  than  either  of  us,  he  would  say,  and 
I  knew  full  well  what  he  meant :  I  knew  he  saw 
how  through  her  quiet  breathing  personality  all 
of  the  elements  passed,  held  by  her  in  solution ! 
I  saw  he  felt  her  quiet  unconscious  power  and 
I  felt  nearer  to  him  and  no  further  from  her 
on  that  account. 

But  then  there  came  the  old  deep  pain  when 
I  felt  again  the  excluding  movement  of  their 
souls.  I  felt  near  to  them,  but  their  growing 
affair  steadily  alienated  them  from  me!  He 
withdrew  from  me  and  I  was  hurt,  and  she  in 
equal  measure  went  farther  and  farther  into 
that  unknown  land  in  which  I  had  no  home,  and 
I  was  hurt  more  deeply  still.  As  they  came 
together,  each  departed  from  me,  and  this 
caused  again  in  me  that  mysterious  unthinking 
pang  which  by  the  shallow-minded  is  called 
jealousy;  but  not  to  feel  that  pang  when  the 
best  that  one  knows  is  threatened  is  to  lack 
life's  impulse.  Oh,  how  may  we  be  broad- 

[159] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


minded,  tolerant  and  civilized,  and  yet  keep 
our  feet  firmly  on  the  basic  reality  of  our  na- 
tures *? 

They  came  together  as  if  they  were  spirit- 
ually brother  and  sister;  there  is  much  loose 
talk  about  "affinities" ;  it  is  a  vague  word  which 
has  become  a  banality,  but  between  these  two 
there  was  a  spontaneous  bond  which  has  never 
been  between  her  and  me.  They  were  drawn 
together  by  a  nameless  similarity;  she  and  I 
were  together,  I  think,  mainly  because  of  my 
insistent  love,  perhaps  because  of  a  mutual 
strangeness.  I  can  never  understand  her  and 
she  can  never  understand  me.  They  under- 
stood one  another  at  once ;  and  of  course  I  was 
therefore  on  the  outside,  an  interested  specta- 
tor of  a  relation  I  did  not  understand,  but 
longed  for. 

When  we  dwell  intensely  on  any  human  re- 
lation we  touch  upon  a  fundamental  mystery; 
but  there  is  nothing  more  real  than  the  mystery 

[160] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


of  being  in  love.  And  although  in  after  years 
she  did  not  admit  it,  and  I  think  does  not  now 
admit  it  to  herself  even,  yet  I  believe  that  for 
the  only  time  in  her  life  she  felt  the  stranget 
temperamental  identity  of  her  soul  with  an- 
other. It  is  no  mere  accident  that  that  man, 
long  years  before  I  knew  her,  and  all  through 
our  friendship,  attracted  me  with  peculiar  force, 
just- as  she  attracted  me;  how  ironical  and  yet 
how  natural  that  the  man  for  whom  I  felt  the 
most  spontaneous  liking  should  be  the  one  for 
whom  she  felt  the  nameless  something  she  never 
felt  for  me ! 

Well,  we  all  met,  as  I  have  written,  abroad, 
and  her  depression  gave  way  at  once  to  a  kind 
of  strong  excitement — the  excitement  of  find- 
ing an  affinity!  And  I  in  the  first  stages  of 
their  affair  played  the  part  of  an  encourager, 
of  an  abettor  and  promoter  of  their  friendship. 
Then,  as  always,  I  longed  for  her  the  fullest 
life,  rejoiced  in  all  that  heightened  her  feeling 

[161] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


and  caused  a  warmer  glow  in  her  physical  and 
moral  nature;  in  anything  that  took  her  from 
her  cooler  depths.  And  my  ideas  of  freedom 
strengthened  this  attitude  of  mine,  and  both 
together  made  it  easy,  at  first,  for  them  to  come 
as  close  together  as  their  souls  desired.  I  still 
hoped  that  she  might  have  the  bond  with  me 
that  was  the  ideal  of  my  life  as  it  touched  the 
personal  relation,  and  at  the  same  time  follow 
all  the  inclinations  of  her  temperament  which 
were  not  easily  aroused  nor  too  many.  Is  it 
an  impossible  hope,  the  sign  of  a  deep-seated 
idealistic  folly?  I  confess,  that  as  time  passed 
and  deep  emotional  fatigue  has  come  to  me  in 
ever  fuller  measure,  that  my  hope  has  waned, 
not  indeed  for  its  realization  for  others  in  the 
remoter  future,  but  for  me,  here,  upon  this 
stretch  of  time,  in  this  our  present  social  state 
which  so  stubbornly  declines  to  accept  the  light 
of  the  higher  reason. 

We  played  for  a  time  abroad;  but  it  was  not 

[162]  ' 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


a  light  and  cheerful  play.  Somber  and  intense 
chords  were  throbbing  beneath  our  frivolous 
talk  together  in  the  cafes  of  Paris,  and  in  and 
out  of  our  wine  suppers  there  was  simmering  a 
more  destructive  flame  than  that  of  the  spirit 
of  the  grape.  We  tried  to  pass  it  off  in  exter- 
nal gayety  and  sensuous  pleasure,  but  sad  in- 
tensity lived  in  all  of  us.  In  me  the  deeper 
jealousy  was  threatening  to  overcome  my  as- 
sumed and  superficial  civilization.  And  in  him 
I  felt  the  strong  and  nervous  impulse  to  make 
a  radical  break,  to  insist  on  a  new  deal  which 
would  nullify  the  past  and  open  up  for  him 
and  her — my  Her! — a  remote  and  faery  life 
apart  from  all  the  world!  And  in  her  there 
began  a  self-destructive  schism,  an  unexpressed 
struggle  which  meant  for  her  something  far 
more  strenuous  than  any  other  situation  of  her 
life. 

He  demanded  silently,  and  more  and  more 
in  words;  it  was  a  fiercely  expressed  demand, 

[163] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


and  as  his  demand  grew,  mine  became  definitely 
aroused,  and  she  was  drawn  and  quartered  be- 
tween the  two.  This  is  roughly  put,  but  the 
expression  is  not  as  roughly  cruel  as  the  real- 
ity. Her  nature  was  made  for  breathing  har- 
mony, for  abiding,  breathing  peace,  and  here 
in  a  deep  soul,  full  of  unconventional,  sincere 
feeling,  was  a  conflict  which  threatened,  and 
later  almost  took,  her  life. 

We  and  he  separated  for  a  period ;  he  stayed 
in  Europe,  and,  our  time  abroad  being  up,  we 
returned  to  America,  and  to  a  Middle  Western 
town  in  the  midst  of  those  monotonous,  pas- 
sionate plains  which  so  intensely  affect  the 
sensitive  temperament.  Here  there  was 
nothing  of  the  civilized  charm  of  the  old  coun- 
tries, a  charm  which  relieves  the  devouring 
central  passions,  and  renders  them  relatively 
harmless. 

From  the  beginning,  she  hated  her  environ- 
ment. She  bitterly  missed  the  picturesque  de- 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


tail  of  Europe,  and  the  long,  melancholy  lines 
of  the  Middle  Western  landscape  fanned  her 
smoldering  resentment  against  me  and  tor- 
tured her  with  the  intense  new  need  which  he 
had  aroused,  and  which  his  eager,  passionate 
letters  sustained  and  stimulated.  It  was  a 
baleful  music  in  her  soul,  and  the  few  people 
she  consented  to  know  in  this,  her  new  home, 
were  caught  up  in  the  fierce  simplicity  of  the 
plains  and  harmonized  with  and  strengthened 
her  mood. 

It  was  a  mood  of  concentrated  pain.  I  felt 
the  inner  struggle  that  was  testing  her  har- 
monizing resources  to  the  uttermost,  and  yet 
I  could  not  relieve  her.  I  could  not  fail  to 
let  her  feel  my  deepening  need  exasperated 
by  the  seriousness  of  her  feeling  for  him. 
Scene  after  scene  made  vivid  to  her  the  reality 
of  my  egotistic  passion  and  his  letters  were  one 
intense,  white  flame.  When  he  came  again  to 
be  with  us  she  could  not  fail  to  feel  increasingly 

" 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


the  sharpness  of  these  two  conflicting  needs. 
He  then  had  come  to  know  that  she  to  him 
was  all,  and  with  a  beautiful  recklessness 
which  charmed  and  terrified  my  soul  he  desired 
with  no  retreating  doubt  to  take  her  completely 
into  his  life.  It  had  ceased  to  be  an  affair  with 
him  and  had  become  the  serious  business  of  his 
existence. 

Now  indeed  was  she  disturbed,  this  quiet 
and  brooding  woman!  The  stronger  elements 
of  feeling  which  I  had  ever  hoped  for  her  and 
to  attain  which  I  had  thrown  so  many  cones 
were  now  indeed  a  menace  to  her  very  being. 
She  was  at  last  disturbed  so  deeply  that  the 
wreck  of  all  was  imminent.  When  I  saw  in 
her  lingering  look  at  him  the  same  wondering 
doubt  of  what  her  destiny  was  to  be,  sharp 
memory  brought  to  me  that  look  of  hers  when 
I  returned  long  years  before  and  felt  her  won- 
dering whether  after  all  she  was  destined  to  live 
with  me! — that  look  which  was  the  beautiful, 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


symbolic  forerunner  of  the  honeymoon  now 
and  forever  a  sensuous,  lyrical  joy  to  me !  And 
here  again  her  nature  was  accepting,  she  was 
unconsciously  prepared  to  see  with  sympathy 
this  other  man,  prepared  to  give  herself  again, 
this  time  with  the  greater,  fuller  intensity  of 
the  intervening  years  of  experience ! 

But  this  time  to  give  herself  meant  a 
destructive  inner  conflict.  As  he  well  said, 
hers  was  a  nature  of  sincere  depth,  incapable 
of  frivolity.  She  could  not  leave  me  spiritually 
nor  could  she  leave  the  children;  she  could  not 
break  the  interwoven  threads  of  those  twelve 
years  of  pain  and  joy  together.  She  could  not 
refuse  my  demand,  nor  could  she  refuse  his 
demand;  she  was  not  capable  of  the  easy  re- 
lation with  him  that  was  not  inharmonious 
with  my  feeling.  For  that  she  cared  too  much 
for  him.  Had  she  taken  him  lightly,  involv- 
ing the  sexual  relation,  I  could  by  that  time 
have  been  reconciled,  seen  it  as  not  meaning 

[167] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


the  destruction  of  the  bond  I  wanted.  But  this 
she  could  not  do.  She  knew  as  I  did  that  her 
feeling  for  him  was  inconsistent  with  that  she 
had  for  me.  She  was  aware  of  excluding  me 
when  with  him!  It  was  this  awareness  that 
shook  her  to  the  depths.  She  did  not  want  it 
so !  It  went  against  her  unconscious  will.  That 
she  could  not  fill  the  deeper  need  of  both  of  us 
— and  neither  of  us  would  accept  the  lesser 
thing,  even  if  she  could  give  it — this  filled  her 
with  a  disappointment  so  keen  that  it  racked 
her  to  the  uttermost.  He  wanted  all  and  so 
did  I,  and  this  she  knew  could  never  be;  and 
yet  she  longed  for  both!  She  wanted  the  ac- 
cepted and  redolent  past,  the  old  bond,  but 
her  temperament  eagerly  desired  the  new,  the 
beckoning  lover! 


Chapter  XI 


T  WAS  him  she  gave  up  and  then 
she  broke.  Ever  since  the  far  dis- 
tant day  in  Europe  when  they  met, 
the  struggle  in  her  soul  had  stirred  and  steadily 
grown  until  her  nervous  system  could  bear  no 
more.  She  has  often  said  that  in  part  that  ter- 
rible situation  was  due  to  her  physical  state, 
but  I  think  it  was  the  other  way  round,  that 
her  physical  state  was  a  result  of  the  unsolvable 
situation. 

At  any  rate  we  were  all  aware  that  she  was 
very  ill.  Her  calm  was  gone,  and  she  was 
utterly  disturbed  to  the  very  marrow.  At  last 
she  was  what  I  had  so  often  desired  and  to 
attain  which  I  had  thrown  so  many  cones 
— taken  completely  away  from  the  reserved 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


depths  which  so  often  had  irritated  me.  Now 
indeed  she  talked,  but  her  talk  to  me  was  tor- 
ture. The  self-restraint  was  gone,  which  had 
always  been  hers,  and  with  an  almost  terrified 
fascination  I  listened  to  her;  listened  to  her 
for  many  weeks  while  I  helped  to  nurse  her 
back  to  life  and  calmness. 

We  went  on  a  trip  together  through  the  sad 
monotonous  prairie  country,  the  first  time  we 
had  been  alone  for  many  years,  without  the 
children,  with  no  one  else.  And  she  talked  to 
me  as  if  to  her  own  soul.  Never  can  I  forget 
the  terrible,  the  utter  frankness  of  it.  I  had 
longed  so  for  expression  from  her — longed  all 
our  life  together,  but  when  it  came,  under 
those  circumstances,  it  was  painful  indeed.  It 
was  so  apparent  that  she  was  shocked  so  deeply 
that  she  hardly  was  aware  of  her  frank  revela- 
tions! She  let  herself  go  with  an  abandon- 
ment quite  unlike  herself,  an  abandonment  so 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


unlike  what  had  become  through  all  those  years 
the  strongest  demand  in  me! 

I  suppose  that  it  was  the  first  time  that  she 
talked  with  no  reserve;  and  she  said  to  me 
things  which  she  has  now  forgotten  and  could 
never  say  again.  But  to  me  they  live  and 
have  taught  me  much  about  myself,  about  her 
and  about  the  relation  which  meant  so  much 
of  life  to  me.  In  the  midst  of  my  utter  dis- 
appointment I  was  yet  at  school.  I  knew  she 
was  very  ill,  that  she  was  all  unraveled  and 
had  for  the  time  given  up  what  held  her  life 
together.  I  knew  it  was  critical.  I  feared  the 
result.  What  she  said  gave  me  constant 
anguish,  but  yet  it  was  not  all  pain.  I,  the 
incorrigible,  was  still  at  school,  still  a  Pilgrim 
seeking  spiritual  progress,  seeking  knowledge! 
It  was  all  so  strange!  That  impersonal  love 
of  life  which  has  been  mine  in  unusual  measure 
persisted,  and  insisted  on  making  a  spiritual 
acquisition  from  my  deepest  woe. 

[171} 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


As  we  drove  through  the  long-lined,  slowly 
passionate  country,  as  she  lay  in  restless  talk, 
ever  growing  more  chaotic  on  her  bed  of 
spiritual  pain,  some  of  the  things  that  I  must 
always  remember,  I  have  set  down.  Extraor- 
dinary they  are  not,  for  I  think  they  breathe 
deep  in  every  noble  woman's  soul,  which  is  a 
spiritual  abode  of  deep  rebellion  against  man's 
conventional  moralities  and  laws. 

In  and  out  of  her  fragmentary  and  ejacu- 
latory  talk  were  vivid  pictures  of  why  he  had 
appealed  to  her  so  strongly,  and  why  I  had 
failed.  I  was  to  her  the  law.  Even  in  my 
criticism  of  existing  laws  I  was  still  law-abid- 
ing. I  was  ever  seeking  a  human  order.  Deep 
in  me  the  traditional  conventions  of  civiliza- 
tion lived.  I  was  social;  I  was  socialized.  I 
felt  the  slow,  painful  family  structure  through 
the  ages.  At  the  thought  of  harm  to  these  my 
soul  was  ever  anxious;  I  was  keen  to  conscious 
man's  historic  struggle  with  life  and  Nature; 


keen  to  his  protecting  artificialities.  Family 
life  and  children,  household  cares  and  anxious 
economies,  fear  of  the  future*  and  prudence, 
mixed  though  it  were  with  temperamental  gen- 
erosity, were  to  her  as  a  prison  house.  To  her 
I  was  the  symbol  of  the  larger  prison,  the 
threatening  finger  of  harsh  law,  the  negator  of 
her  primitive  imagination  and  of  the  impulse 
beyond  good  and  evil. 

But  he  was  different.  In  him  she  felt  a  gen- 
uine unmorality,  a  fresh,  refreshing,  salad-like 
unscrupulousness.  He  was  capable  of  a  relation 
to  her  which  had  no  law,  which  was  connected 
with  no  principle,  with  nothing  beyond  itself. 
The  love  I  bore  her  she  saw  as  impersonal  in 
large  measure :  I  loved  her  because  she  revealed 
so  much  to  me  of  beauty;  it  was  really  the 
beauty  I  loved,  not  her,  something  of  which 
she  was  an  instrument,  as  all  other  things  in 
life  were  instruments  to  me  of  the  Divine  Some- 
thing. She  felt  I  was  religious  and  moral,  and 

[173] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


he  was  neither.  He  took  her  as  she  was:  he 
loved  her,  that  particular  woman,  and  asked 
no  metaphysical  questions,  did  not  live  in  soul- 
torturing  and  impossible  spiritual  strainings. 
His  intensity  was  for  her  alone,  and  he  was 
willing  to  break  all  else  and  give  her  freedom 
— freedom  from  morality,  from  anxiety,  from 
responsibility,  from  law — from  me!  It  was 
the  eternal  advantage  of  the  lover  over  the  hus- 
band. 

I  was  too  good,  she  said  to  me,  in  constant 
moving  criticism.  She  meant  I  was  not  free 
to  be  an  exciting  self,  a  pure  and  life-giving 
form.  I  did  not  make  the  last  appeal  to  her 
imagination,  for  I  was  bound,  she  thought,  by 
all  things  not  myself.  I  was  too  good !  How  I 
longed  to  be  otherwise,  and  yet  how  fully  I 
knew  I  could  not  be  but  what  I  was — not  good, 
but  deeply  careful,  carrying  with  me  all  the 
Past,  holding  all  together,  insisting  on  the 
Soul !  It  was  this,  this  Soul  that  oppressed  and 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


hampered  her.  She  needed  to  fly  off  into  mere 
cool  existences,  into  the  soulless  places  of  the 
spirit. 

And  then  again  I  had  loved  her  too  much, 
or  at  any  rate  too  actively;  had  not  left  to  her 
enough  to  do  in  our  relation,  not  enough  ini- 
tiative; this  was  a  thought  on  which  she  con- 
stantly dwelt.  Her  deepest  passion  was  to 
construct;  she  needed  to  build,  to  feel  that  of 
her  own  will  she  was  bringing  to  the  relation. 
Her  personal  work,  her  writing,  had  been  the 
way  in  which  she  felt  she  was  herself.  There 
it  was  all  her  own  doing;  if  she  could  have  felt 
that  our  relation  was  her  construction,  not 
mine,  she  would  have  loved  me  more!  She 
had  a  need  to  go  out  actively  to  others  as  I  had 
gone  to  her !  She  did  not  so  much  want  to  be 
wooed  as  to  woo!  This  was  her  mood,  ex- 
pressed with  passion. 

I  make  no  attempt  to  tell  how  I  suffered  at 
this  time.  It  seems  to  me  my  agony  went  be- 

[175] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


yond  the  point  of  personal  suffering  and  was  a 
quality  of  external  things — that  it  was  a  uni- 
versal pain,  deep  and  full  and  hopeless.  I  lost 
my  habitual  nervousness  and  was  calm.  To  see 
the  woman  who  meant  so  much  to  me  thus  ex- 
press her  deep  dissatisfaction  and  to  feel  that 
she  was,  mainly  because  of  me,  almost  at 
death's  door, — well,  I  cannot  say  what  this  was 
to  me.  Each  man  kills  the  thing  he  loves  in- 
deed! How  this  woman,  like  a  fly,  had  been 
caught,  her  free  flight  impeded,  by  my  all-em- 
bracing, passionate  egotism!  I  felt  a  pity  for 
her  that  was  perhaps  more  unendurable  than 
all  else. 

Then  there  came  the  hospital,  for  her  life 
and  reason  were  threatened.  For  many  weeks 
she  lay  in  danger,  feverishly,  unconsciously 
contending  with  herself,  and  I,  admitted  for  a 
short  hour  each  day,  sat  quietly  by  her  side, 
hoping,  waiting,  for  returning  strength  and  self- 
control.  Indeed,  it  seems  to  me  that  it  was  I 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


who  nursed  her  back  to  life,  for  I  would  not 
have  her  go ! 

It  was  I  and  her  strong  will,  for  that  she 
finally  wanted  to  live,  in  part  for  me  and  for 
the  children,  there  is  no  doubt.  Life  returned 
with  flickering,  hesitating  fear,  and  in  tremu- 
lous lines  she  wrote  me  a  note  in  which  it 
seemed  to  me  a  new  love  breathed !  And  then, 
a  little  stronger,  she  wrote  a  poem,  a  ballad  of 
intense  and  simple  passion,  in  which  is  told 
how  a  mermaid,  loving  her  native  salty  sub- 
stance and  the  damp  sea-weed  and  the  unmoral, 
beautiful  sea,  meets  one  day  upon  the  shore  a 
human  man  and  loves  and  marries  him  and  has 
fine  children  whom  she  loves.  But  the  sea 
beckons,  and  one  day  upon  the  shore  she  meets 
a  salty  merman,  her  old  deep-sea  lover,  and 
upon  a  gust  of  sensuous  desire  goes  with  him 
into  her  native  region,  where  alone  she  is  at 
home.  But  after  unthinking  satisfaction  in  the 
depths  the  thought  of  her  acquired  civilization, 

[177] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


of  her  husband  and  her  lovely,  needing  chil- 
dren, comes  strong  upon  her,  and  she  seeks  the 
sorrowing  human,  who,  in  despairing  passion, 
tries  to  drive  her  hence! 

Oh,  how  wonderful,  how  life-giving  is  the 
power  of  song,  of  any  swelling  art !  That  she 
could  sing,  no  matter  how  tragic-wise,  showed 
returning  strength,  and  a  strength  that  bred 
more  strength!  Yes,  the  tide  turned  and  be- 
gan to  flow,  and  as  it  swelled,  a  new  hope  was 
born  in  her — in  me ! 


t'78] 


Chapter  XII 

HE  had  gone  the  limit  of  her  im- 
pulse leading  her  away,  as  far  as 
the  sweetness  and  beauty  of  her  na- 
ture permitted  her  to  go.  She  had  gone  down 
almost  to  death,  and  when  she  emerged,  it  was 
like  the  phoenix  from  the  ashes.  A  new  spirit, 
one  of  willful  lovingness,  breathed  in  all  her 
being.  There  was  a  subtle  change  in  her  at- 
titude toward  the  children.  She  had  always 
loved  them,  but  now  her  love  was  unimpeded. 
She  accepted  them  at  last!  The  grace  of  her 
demeanor  toward  them,  those  deep,  lingering, 
questioning  looks  at  them,  these  were  instinct 
with  a  beauty  which  really  qualified  of  heaven ! 
And  I  had  become  one  of  her  children !  The 
unsentimental,  inexpressive  depth  of  her  sym- 

[179] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


pathy  had  been  touched.  I  knew  she  loved  me, 
and  I  regretted  nothing  of  the  past;  the  won- 
derful, glorious,  painful  past  which  had  led  us 
both  to  greater  feeling  for  things  outside,  for 
life  itself;  gave  us  both  a  greater  impersonal 
love,  a  love  that  lacked  more  and  more  of  the 
exasperation  of  temperament,  possessed  more 
and  more  of  the  pure  classic  line  of  unegotistic 
passion ! 

Yes,  I  knew  she  loved  me,  and  it  gave  me 
deep,  but  not  untroubled  peace.  I  could  not 
forget  that  I  had  not  had  to  the  full  the  other 
kind  of  love — that  she  had  never  been  "in 
love"  with  me!  That  need  in  me  had  never 
been  and  never  could  be  satisfied !  I  feel  sure 
in  my  reflective  moments  that  had  she  had  that 
temperamental  dependent  love  for  me,  she 
would  not  have  constantly  appeared  to  me  so 
beautiful,  so  wonderful!  It  was  in  part  her 
inalienable  independence  of  me  that  filled  me 
with  so  passionate  a  respect,  even  when  I  strove 

[180] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


to  break  it  down!  The  inevitable  quality  of 
her  resistance,  her  unconscious  integrity,  is  the 
most  beautiful  thing  that  I  have  ever  known! 
What  so  often  has  filled  me  with  violent  despair 
and  fierce  unspoken  reproach  was  perhaps  the 
most  necessary  condition  of  my  underlying 
feeling. 

And  now  she  had  fully  accepted  me,  but  in 
the  way  in  which  she  had  accepted  the  children, 
the  household,  and  her  lot  in  life.  But  she  re- 
mained herself!  She  could  give  us  love,  but 
could  not  give  herself  away!  Always  myste- 
riously remote  from  us,  no  matter  how  tender ! 
Not  needing,  though  infinitely  loving.  How 
often  when  I  have  seen  her  slow,  quiet,  hu- 
morous smile  have  I  thought  of  the  Mona  Lisa 
of  Leonardo;  of  that  unnervous  strength,  of 
the  "depth  and  not  the  tumult  of  the  soul." 

A  few  months  after  her  recovery  the  new 
strange  life  of  another  child  began  to  stir  in 
her — a  child  about  whose  being  she  fitted  her- 

[181] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


self  with  peculiar  perfectness.  This  fourth  in- 
fant, another  little  girl,  was  conceived,  nour- 
ished and  born  with  no  resisting  element  in  the 
mother's  nature.  It  was  as  if  time  and  strug- 
gle had  now  fully  prepared  her  to  bring  forth. 
Her  Pilgrim's  Progress  was  beautifully  shown 
in  the  new  life,  which  at  birth  filled  her  with 
an  exuberance  never  hers  before;  an  exhilara- 
tion more  strongly  shown  and  a  delighted  ap- 
preciation without  a  flaw.  And  this  little  girl, 
now  four  years  old,  has  had  a  life  of  unrelieved, 
gay  joy,  taking  happiness  and  health  as  her  na- 
tive element  and  spreading  joy  to  others  and 
especially  to  her  mother  as  the  little  rippling 
waves  give  gay  music  to  the  long  receding  shore. 
And  so  perfect  was  her  adjustment  that  even 
another  blow  from  the  hand  of  Nature,  coming 
a  few  months  before  the  birth,  did  not  affect 
the  unborn  child.  The  little  boy,  always  so 
sensitive,  who  had  been  born  following  the  sud- 
den death  of  her  father,  was  again  taken  ill, 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


and  for  months  and  years  we  feared  not  death 
but  permanent  invalidism.  It  was  an  intense, 
sad  experience  for  both  of  us,  relieved  by  its 
happy  result,  but  taking  from  me  a  certain  ele- 
ment of  my  native  spring.  I  was  very  close 
to  the  boy  all  through  his  illness,  lasting  sev- 
eral years,  and  one  effect  it  had  was  to  give  me 
a  greater  need  of  impersonal  activity  than  I  had 
ever  had  before. 

Her  going  down  into  the  Valley  of  the 
Shadow  and  the  terrible  illness  of  the  child  af- 
fected me  more  deeply  than  anything  else  in 
my  life.  I  had,  in  a  way,  been  nurse  to  both 
of  them;  nearer  far  to  each  than  any  one  else 
had  been  to  them,  and  to  see  these  two  beloved 
beings  struggling  for  life,  to  feel  in  each  the 
last  supreme  effort  of  their  spiritual  structure 
to  exist,  this  was  more  than  I  could  bear  with- 
out relief. 

And  so  when  he  had  pulled  through  his  long 
travail  in  which,  child  as  he  was,  he  had  strug- 

[183] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


gled  like  a  hero  for  existence,  and  she  had,  for 
the  time  at  least,  become  adjusted  to  her  lot, 
and  happy  with  her  latest  born,  I  turned  to 
work  and  outside  life  with  a  greater  impersonal 
activity  than  I  had  ever  shown  before. 

Then  followed  three  years  when  to  a  greater 
extent  than  ever,  I  lived  among  my  fellow  men 
and  devoted  myself  more  to  the  so-called  larger 
social  activities  of  men  and  women,  to  the  work 
of  the  world;  and  was  therefore  automatically 
withdrawn  more  from  the  life  of  the  family. 
These  activities  meant  more  to  me  for  what  I 
had  gone  through  in  personal  relations ;  I  think 
I  saw  their  meaning  better,  and  was  better  able 
to  act  and  think  maturely.  More  clearly  I  saw, 
more  deeply  I  felt  the  necessary  needs  of  men 
and  women  and  their  relation  to  the  invisible 
reality  we  call  human  society.  For  the  pur- 
pose and  ultimate  destiny  of  society  is  an  or- 
ganized condition  in  which  the  relations  be- 
tween particular  men  and  women  and  their  chil- 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


dren  shall  be  fully  and  beneficently  developed, 
where  the  architecture  of  human  relations  may 
tower  to  its  fullest  and  most  lovely  height. 

Not  only  did  I  turn  to  these  impersonal  ac- 
tivities for  relief,  but  as  a  natural  and  inev- 
itable development.  I  am  not,  however,  here 
concerned  in  picturing  my  life  except  in  so  far 
as  it  concerns  my  central  love  relation.  This 
is  "the  story  of  a  lover.  These  activities  of 
mine  were  modified  by  the  experience  of  my 
relation  with  her,  and  my  relation  with  her  was 
affected  by  the  nature  of  my  activities,  and 
therefore  from  time  to  time  in  this  narrative 
I  have  touched,  merely  touched  upon  them. 

In  these  goings  out  to  the  world,  one  set  of 
experiences  are  peculiarly  connected  with  my 
relation  to  her;  affected  it  and  were  affected  by 
it;  my  relations  with  other  women.  And  here 
I  come  to  a  most  delicate  situation  to  explain, 
where  to  be  truthful  is  probably  beyond  my 
ability,  try  as  I  may.  Only  those  who  have 

[185] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


shared  my  experience,  at  least  in  some  measure, 
will  understand,  but  as  many  men  and  women, 
as  all  men  and  women  who  have  the  imagina- 
tion and  ambition  for  love,  have  in  some  meas- 
ure shared  my  experience,  though  perhaps  only 
in  vague  movements  and  tendencies,  there  will 
be  some  understanding  of  my  words. 

I  grew  constantly  nearer  to  other  women.  I 
was  filled  with  a  passionate  sympathy  for  them. 
I  felt  their  struggle  and  their  social  situation 
as  never  before,  and  I  understood  far  better 
what  is  called  their  weaknesses ;  and  I  saw  with 
greater  intensity  their  unconventional  beauty. 
I  saw  that  beauty  in  a  woman's  nature  has  noth- 
ing to  do  with  what  is  called  chastity.  I  saw 
how  little  sexual  resistance  women  have,  and 
yet  how  much  they  are  supposed  to  have !  How 
their  real  virtues  are  ignored  and  false  ones 
substituted ! 

In  these  years  I  met  several  women  with 
whom  I  desired  the  uttermost  intimacy.  I  had 

[186] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


for  them  the  utmost  respect  and  my  instinct 
told  me  that  they  were  ready  for  me,  ready  to 
give  me  what  I  had  never  had.  How  I  longed 
to  be  able  to  give  myself  over  completely!  I 
did  give  myself  as  far  as  my  conscious  will  per- 
mitted, but  always,  no  matter  how  deep  my 
friendship,  no  matter  how  intimate  I  was  with 
my  appreciated  and  appreciative  friend,  the  un- 
conscious instinct,  that  deep  uncontrollable 
imagination  kept  me  bound  to  Her  as  a  slave  is 
bound  to  its  master.  It  was  often  to  me  hu- 
miliating and  disgusting  that  I  could  not  be 
free  of  her,  that  I  could  not  go  as  far  with  others 
as  my  social  judgment  and  my  civilized  will 
demanded. 

I  met  women  who  were  disappointed  as  I  was 
disappointed;  who  needed  just  what  I  needed 
— who  needed  to  feel  a  deep  reciprocity  in  pas- 
sion, a  mutual  giving-up  to  the  Beyond  in  each 
other's  arms.  And  I  could  not,  try  as  I  might, 
meet  those  longing  spirits !  I  wanted  to,  both 

[187] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


for  them  and  for  myself.  I  succeeded  in  feel- 
ing deeply  friendly  with  them  and  they  with 
me,  but  underlying  our  friendship  was  an  irri- 
tated disappointment.  .  .  . 

I  had  an  intense  longing  to  satisfy  longing. 
My  deepest  pleasure  was  to  give  pleasure.  This 
filled  me  with  strange  excitement.  It  was  not 
the  desire  to  do  good  to  anybody;  it  was  far 
more  real  than  that;  it  responded  to  an  egotis- 
tic need  of  my  own  temperament.  And  the 
pain  that  almost  drove  me  mad  at  times  was 
that  She  had  no  need  for  me  to  satisfy ! 

Other  women  had  and  how  at  times  I  strove 
to  satisfy  them !  How  I  almost  wept  when  I 
could  not !  How  I  hated  and  despised  myself 
and  yet  wondered  at  the  strength  of  something 
in  me  that  was  not  myself,  a  something  that 
held  me  bound  to  Her,  in  a  way  I  did  not  want 
to  be  bound !  How  I  longed  to  give  myself  to 
those  who  needed  me,  but  how  I  could  not  take 
myself  from  Her  who  had  no  temperamental 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


need  of  me !  In  this  there  was  a  deep,  imper- 
sonal cruelty,  the  irony  of  life,  the  laughing 
mystery  of  the  universe. 

I  imagine  that  experience  increases  one's  need 
to  give  oneself, — to  work,  to  others'  needs,  to 
the  impersonal  demand  of  Life.  At  any  rate 
in  me  this  has  been  an  ever-growing  passion, 
and  as  I  felt  more  strongly  about  the  world, 
about  art  and  literature  and  Labor  and  society, 
I  felt  more  strongly  about  women,  and  loved 
them  always  more,  and  this  love  was  in  part  a 
measure  of  their  need  of  me !  I  deeply  wanted 
them  to  take  of  me  all  they  could — more  than 
they  were  able!  If  they  could  have  taken 
more  I  would  have  been  more  deeply  satisfied ! 
It  is  a  strange  truth  that  as  I  grew  older  and 
more  impersonal  in  my  passion,  women  drew 
nearer  to  me  and  wanted  of  me  more,  but  were 
able  to  take  of  me  in  minor  measure  only. 

And  She  who  had  helped  me  to  be  capable  of 
the  intenser  passion  stood  between  me  and  its 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


satisfaction !  With  her  I  could  not  satisfy  my 
ultimate  longing  for  she  had  no  ultimate  long- 
ing to  meet  mine !  But  because  of  her  I  could 
not  fully  meet  the  need  of  others  and  thereby 
satisfy  my  own! 

I  cannot  dwell  upon  these  few  years  of  work 
and  of  social  and  emotional  attempts  at  for- 
eign intimacy  with  my  women  friends.  My 
affairs  were  a  part  of  my  larger  going  out  to 
the  world  and  also  due  to  what  I  at  last  had 
clearly  seen — that  although  She  loved  me,  she 
Hid  not  need  me  in  the  lovers'  relation,  and  so 
I  could  not  fully  exhaust  myself  in  an  attempt 
to  satisfy  her,  and  I  needed  so  much  to  exhaust 
myself! — to  give  myself  away  without  reserve! 
Important  and  detailed  as  these,  my  human  re- 
lations were,  I  can  here  only  touch  upon  them 
to  the  degree  that  they  help  to  show  my  rela- 
tion to  her — the  central  relation  of  my  life — ' 
for  this  is  the  story  of  a  lover,  and  it  is  true  that 
I  have  loved  her  only — this  strange,  cool,  in- 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


comprehensible,  wonderful  woman,  so  beau- 
tifully aloof  from  me,  yet  so  loving,  and  so  lit- 
tle in  love ! 

Since  we  had  hurt  one  another  at  times  so 
much  there  had  grown  up  between  us  a  greater 
reserve.  We  did  not  tend  to  talk  so  much 
about  others.  I  was  far  less  of  a  retriever  who 
brought  back  rich  human  stories — when  they 
involved  me — to  my  mistress !  But  in  an  im- 
pulsive moment  I  told  her  of  my  attempt  to 
meet  other  women,  to  satisfy  in  them  a  demand 
that  she  did  not  feel,  to  respond  to  a  feeling  in 
them  for  me  that  she  did  not  feel. 

And  then  again,  more  intensely  than  ever,  she 
was  hurt.  What  had  happened  to  her  abroad 
was  as  nothing  compared  to  this.  She  was 
filled  for  months  with  a  deep  passionate  re- 
sentment— something  I  had  never  seen  in  her 
before.  She  felt  she  had  given  up  much  when 
she  broke  with  her  lover;  she  had,  she  thought, 
laid  aside,  once  for  all,  the  great  illusion,  and 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


had  done  so  because  of  her  great  love  for  me 
and  the  children.  And  when  she  saw  I  could 
not  give  up  that  illusion,  that  I  was  still  long- 
ing for  the  intangible  reality  she  could  not  give 
me,  again  there  came  to  her  a  destructive  blow. 
She  had  renounced  for  this ! 

Once  more  there  were  a  long  series  of  frank 
talks  from  her — those  rare  and  wonderful 
though  terrible  revelations  of  an  inexpressive 
soul!  I  found  that  during  all  these  years  of 
our  married  life  she  had  felt  my  infidelities, 
not  exactly  with  pain,  but  that  they  had  caused 
her  to  retire  more  and  more  within  herself.  The 
slight  but  lovely  bud  of  her  affection  had  never 
been  able  to  flower.  Her  love  for  me  was  more 
and  more  maternal,  the  illusion  of  sex  more 
and  more  absent;  the  moment  came  when  it 
seemed  to  be  quite  gone.  Of  course  I  said  it 
had  never  been,  and  I  believe  I  am  right,  that 
she  had  had  only  the  possibility  of  it,  for  me 
or  for  another,  never  realized.  And  I  told  her 

[192] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


over  and  over  again  that  now  she  loved  me,  ma- 
ternally or  otherwise,  more  than  ever — that  her 
conventional  disapproval  of  my  acts  and  her 
deeper  infidelity  of  thought  and  feeling  had  not 
withdrawn  her  from  me,  but  had  brought  her 
nearer. 

She  suffered,  I  really  know  not  why,  because 
of  my  relations  with  other  women — they  were 
not  the  relations  she  wanted  for  herself,  and 
yet  she  suffered.  And  when  I  saw  more  clearly 
than  ever  before  that  there  was  something  in 
her  which  by  necessity  was  hurt  by  this  my  con- 
duct, there  came  a  strange  change  in  me.  I 
hated  to  lose  any  shade  of  her  feeling  for  me, 
and  I  closed  up  instinctively  my  social  sympa- 
thy, and  my  natural  intimate  outgoing  to  other 
women  ceased ! 

But  my  sacrifice,  like  hers,  like  all  sacrifices, 
was  useless — nay,  more,  was  harmful.  My  at- 
titude of  receptive  openness,  not  only  to  women, 
but  to  men  and  work,  to  life,  was  in  large  meas- 

[193] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


ure  gone.  My  friends  noticed  that  I  had  lost 
the  keen  zest  for  experience  which  had  been  so 
characteristic  of  me.  She  herself  began  to  see 
that  I  was  older  in  spirit,  that  I  was  sinking  into 
the  reserve  and  timidity  of  old  age,  and  that 
my  creative  initiative  in  work  and  life  was  less. 
And  I  felt  it,  too.  I  made  no  effort  to  be  dif- 
ferent. I  simply  was  different,  and  I  saw  that 
my  work  and  my  life  were  more  araemic,  but  I 
could  not  help  it.  Somehow  her  clearly  re- 
vealed pain  and  aesthetic  disapproval  had  for 
the  time  at  least  strangely  crippled  me.  And 
this,  of  course,  was  no  good  to  her.  I  was  less 
amusing,  and  still  to  her  the  word  amusing  was 
of  all  but  the  greatest  moment.  She  began  to 
regret  my  virtue  and  my  old  age.  She  saw 
that  one  was  part  of  the  other,  indissolubly  con- 
nected. She  saw  that  I  had  done  brutal  things 
to  others,  under  her  influence,  and  I  think  her 
conscience  hurt  her,  as  did  mine.  But  beyond 
all  else  she  felt  that  she  had  invaded  my  per- 

[194] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


sonality  and  thereby  weakened  it,  and  in  about 
a  year  she  withdrew  from  her  position  and  tac- 
itly gave  me  to  understand  that  she  would  be 
well  content  to  have  me  go  my  ways. 

During  that  year  she  had  been  consciously 
willing  to  have  another  lover;  she  had  seen 
beautiful  men  whom  she  admired  and  who  ad- 
mired her,  but  deeper  than  her  mind  was  her 
fundamental  disillusionment.  She  knew  that 
this  for  her  was  not  to  be.  I  saw  that  she  was 
on  the  look-out,  and  yet  I  knew  that  there  was 
nothing  deep  in  her  demand,  that  she  was  sat- 
isfied with  life,  disillusioned  with  what  is  called 
being  in  love,  but  loving  more  what  she  had — 
children,  friends,  work  and  me.  Yes,  me! 
She  loved  me  more  after  all  this  strange  and 
twisted  travail!  Even  when  she  calmly  told 
me,  as  she  did,  that  she  no  longer  wanted  me  in 
any  temperamental  way — that  the  little  she 
had  felt  was  gone — even  then  I  ,/elt  a  strange 
certainty  of  her  love  for  me !  For  her  love  for 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


me  was  of  Platonic  purity  and  strength,  un- 
mixed with  sex  or  sentimentality,  that  seemed 
to  me  to  be  of  the  essence  of  tenderness. 

She  seems  now  to  have  given  up  her  futile 
desire  to  desire  others  and  to  have  accepted  for 
herself  a  deep  aloof  affection  and  tenderness 
for  me  and  for  all  who  touch  her.  This  same 
she  wants  from  me  and  only  accepts  but  does 
not  desire  my  metaphysical  needs,  my  sexual 
straining  towards  the  universe's  oblivion.  This 
she  neither  understands  nor  likes.  This  she 
feels  should  be  put  on  other  things,  on  work, 
on  thought  and  impersonal  activity,  and  she  is 
right,  but  I,  although  going  in  that  direction, 
am  not  ready — yet. 

As  yet  my  soul  is  not  satisfied.  It  is  with  a 
deep  unwillingness  that  I  feel  her  temperamen- 
tal withdrawal — which  in  a  less  degree  has  al- 
ways been  true  of  her  but  never  so  clearly  seen 
by  me.  That  she  loves  me  more,  perhaps,  in 
another  way,  can  never  meet  that  fundamental 

[196] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


madness  that  every  lover  has.  I  can  never  be 
satisfied  until  I  find  the  Other — and  I  know  I 
can  never  find  the  Other,  and  never  really  want 
to.  I  know  that  what  I  passionately  want  is 
a  deep  illusion,  which  can  never  come.  It  is 
of  Life's  essence,  which  is  to  us  illusory,  as  it 
can  never  be  known  and  does  not  respond  to 
our  Ideal.  It  is  a  passion  that  leads  to  death, 
but  when  real  as  mine  is,  never  leads  to  satis- 
faction. 

Here  I  am  at  middle  life  living  with  the  one 
woman  I  want  to  live  with,  hopeful  for  my  fine 
children,  interested  in  a  work  I  have  chosen  and 
which  was  not  forced  upon  me,  rich  in  friends, 
in  good  health,  and  seeing  progressively  the  sad 
splendid  beauty  of  Nature  and  Art,  hopeful  for 
man's  struggle  to  break  his  bonds  and  interested 
in  cooperating  with  him,  and  yet,  in  spite  of  all, 
passionately  unsatisfied ! 

Passionately  unsatisfied,  and  yet  to  me  she 
is  more  beautiful,  more  wonderful  than  ever! 

[197] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


This  inaccessible  woman,  approaching  middle 
age,  more  loving  to  me  and  more  remote  than 
ever,  consciously  rejecting  me  as  a  lover  and  ac- 
cepting me  warmly  as  a  child,  her  complete  and 
impersonal  loveliness,  is  the  one  perfect  expe- 
rience of  my  life,  the  experience  that  permeates 
and  affects  all  others,  that  has  subtly  inter- 
twined itself  in  my  love  for  children  and  na- 
ture, for  work  and  for  the  destiny  of  my  fellow- 
men.  It  has  been  the  sap  of  my  life,  which  has 
urged  the  slender  stalk  into  the  full-grown  tree 
with  its  many  branches  and  its  decorative 
voluminous  lines. 

The  sap  still  urges  its  undeniable  way;  my 
youthful  passion  still  maintains  itself  but  now 
more  than  ever  it  meets  only  the  rich  maternal 
smile,  full  of  knowledge  and  a  kind  of  tender 
scorn.  As  I  write  these  lines — she,  for  the  mo- 
ment, distant  from  me  by  the  length  of  an  ocean 
— I  remember  the  days  when  with  a  certain  re- 
sponse she  played  with  me  with  a  light  grace. 

[198] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


Two  little  incidents  come  back  to  me  from  the 
multitudinous  deluge  of  the  past — one,  when, 
with  the  laughter  of  unconventionality,  we 
openly  and  completely  embraced  on  the  bosom 
of  a  Swiss  glacier  encouraged  by  the  full  sun 
of  noon!  Again,  when,  in  our  fancy,  she  was 
the  wife  of  another,  and  we  indulged  in  sweet 
mutual  infidelity  after  a  delicious  supper  in  a 
French  garden  on  the  banks  of  the  Seine !  How 
we  talked  and  smiled,  and  how  we  held  for  the 
moment  aloof  the  serious  madness  that  was  be- 
hind my  passion!  How  we  enjoyed  the  deco- 
rous and  polite  knowledge  of  the  host  who 
ushered  us  to  the  guilty  couch !  And  how  our 
French  epigrams  were  mixed  up  with  our  light 
and  happy  caresses!  And  at  that  time,  she 
was  beginning  to  see  Him,  and  I  had  thrown 
my  cone — my  play  with  the  lady  in  Italy !  And 
this  added  zest,  and  she  threw  at  me  with  more 
than  joyous  lightness  a  glass  of  wine  which 
stained  my  white  immaculate  shirt  and  brought 

[199] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


me  to  her  with  a  quick  reproachful  embrace! 

Yes,  these  gestures  I  must  remember,  in  this 
the  day  of  the  waning  of  our  lighter  relations ! 
The  waning,  yes,  of  our  lighter  amorousness, 
indeed  the  beginning  of  the  day  when  she  pushes 
me  away,  but  at  the  same  time  the  beginning 
of  a  love  for  me  that  passes  understanding,  that 
has  no  material  expression,  that  is  full  of  com- 
passion, of  a  kind  of  dignified  pity !  A  love  in 
which  the  temperament  plays  no  part,  but  to 
which  all  that  has  been  between  us — pleasure, 
pain,  difficulties,  work  and  infidelities — give  an 
indescribable  solidity  and  depth.  Nothing  on 
earth  can  separate  us.  Our  relation,  indeed,  is 
built  on  a  fortress  which  nothing  but  a  double 
death  can  destroy,  and  perhaps  not  even  that ! 

What  is  the  romance  of  a  young  couple,  pre- 
vious to  their  first  nuptials,  as  compared  with 
our  full  experience*?  Why  do  novels*  as  a  rule, 
end  with  the  first  slight  lyrical  gesture?  Why 
do  we  inculcate  in  the  imagination  of  the  young 

[200] 


The  Story  of  a  Lover 


and  in  our  moral  code  a  false  conception  of  the 
nature  of  virtue?  Why  do  we  imply  that 
chastity  in  woman  has  anything  to  do  with 
goodness,  or  that  physical  movements  neces- 
sarily affect  a  soul  relation"?  I  do  not  know 
why  we  have  built  up  historically  these  colos- 
sal lies  which  give  us  pain  and  unnecessary 
jealousy  and  despair. 

'  But  what  is  to  me  the  deepest  mystery  of 
all — and  this  a  glorious  mystery  which  distils 
a  spiritual  fragrance  to  all  of  life — is  what 
holds  a  man  and  woman  together  through  an 
entire  eternity  of  experience.  She  is  to  me  the 
key  of  existence  that  opens  up  the  realm  of 
the  Infinite  which,  though  I  can  never  reach, 
yet  sheds  upon  all  things  its  colorful  meaning. 
It  is  only  the  conception  of  the  Eternal  which 
gives  interest  to  every  concrete  detail.  God  in- 
heres as  a  quality  in  all  things.  Religion  is 
right  when  it  points  the  fact  that  without  Him 
there  is  nothing. 

[201] 


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